Judges to deliver verdict in war crimes trial of Charles Taylor
Thursday, April 26, 2012Omoba
Charles Taylor, the warlord who rose to
lead Liberia, could become the first ex-president to be consigned to a British
prison cell after judgment is delivered in his war crimes trial today.
“The government calls on all Liberians to remain calm and peaceful and to pray for the nation and peace,”
President
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s office said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Mr
Taylor has been on trial at the court sitting in The Hague for almost five
years. He is accused of backing rebels who killed thousands during Sierra
Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war. They became notorious for using child soldiers and
hacking off the limbs of enemies. He launched a rebellion in Liberia in 1989 in
a bid to overthrow the hated regime of Samuel Doe, a move which descended into
bloody civil war with a panoply of factions.
Taylor
was elected president in 1997 but two years later civil war broke out anew and
fighting only ended when he fled to Nigeria in 2003. He remained out of reach
there until Nigeria in March 2006 bowed to international calls to extradite
him.
Mr
Taylor denies 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tens
of thousands of people died in Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war which ended
in 2002. If Mr Taylor is found guilty he is expected to go to a prison in the
UK.
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