A year after Charles Taylor launched his rebellion from deep in the Liberian forest sparking war across the region, his mother said he had always been a stubborn child.
”Among all my children, Charles’s attitude is just different. He is a very stubborn person — since his childhood days,” Taylor’s mother, Yassa Zoe Taylor, said in 1990.
Taylor, charismatic and charming; a showman with a zeal for costume and dramatic effect, was born on January 28 1948 in the small riverbank town of Arthington, about 25km outside the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
The poor boy was educated in the United States, studying economics at Bentley College in Boston, Massachusetts. While there, Taylor joined the Union of Liberian Associations in The Americas and was highly critical of the Liberian government, in which current Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was finance minister.
Taylor returned to Liberia in the late 1970s, shortly after the country’s first bloody military coup d’état, staged by semi-literate Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe.
Doe appointed Taylor director general of the General Services Agency — essentially the leader’s logistics man. But three years on, Taylor was accused of stealing $1-million of government money and he bolted to the US.
Despite his bloody military background, Doe was a frequent White House guest under US president Ronald Reagan and the Liberian leader filed an extradition suit for Taylor’s arrest and deportation.
The US arrested and detained Taylor, but after 15 months he escaped under circumstances that remain murky. While in prison, Taylor turned to former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, who is currently leading the defence of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Taylor resurfaced in Libya, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire where he mustered financial support to launch his rebel movement.
Taylor’s rise and fall
December 1989 — Civil war begins as Taylor’s rebels launch their crusade. Many fighters are children.
July 1997 — Taylor is elected president. His victory is widely seen as a bid to end the fighting.
May 2000 — Sierra Leonean rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), hand over 124 UN hostages held for several weeks, after Taylor intervenes. Britain accuses him of selling guns to the RUF in exchange for diamonds.
March 2003 — The Special Court for Sierra Leone approves an arrest warrant and indicts Taylor on 17 counts of war crimes.
July 2003 — Taylor agrees to leave Liberia and take up asylum in Nigeria.
March 2004 — UN orders freeze of Taylor’s economic and financial assets.
July 2005 — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone call for review of Taylor’s asylum deal, citing interference that could undermine regional peace.
March 2006 — Liberia seeks his extradition; he flees from his Nigerian home and is arrested on the Nigeria-Cameroon border. — Irin