Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor failed to attend a court hearing on Monday to defend himself against a bid by two Nigerian amputees to force their government to hand him over to international justice.
Emmanuel Egbuna and David Anyaele, who were mutilated by Sierra Leonean rebels in 1999, allege that Taylor had a role in their ordeal and have asked for a judicial review of Nigeria’s decision to grant him political asylum.
Taylor has not been summoned to face the court but, along with Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo, he is a respondent in a suit designed to force Nigeria to hand him over to a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone.
”We are saying, on the basis of applicable law, that Taylor ought not to have been granted asylum,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mutiu Ganiyu, told the Federal High Court in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
”I am surprised that he did not come to court today … but the case will still go ahead if he fails to be represented at the next sitting,” he added.
Taylor fled to Nigeria in August last year as rebel fighters closed in on the Liberian capital, Monrovia. He was granted asylum by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in exchange for not interfering in Liberia’s peace process.
Taylor, Obasanjo, Nigeria’s justice minister and three government agencies have been named as respondents in the suit. All but Taylor were represented.
In 1999 Egbuna and Anyaele were businessmen working in wartorn Sierra Leone. They were caught by rebel fighters and, like thousands of local civilians, they were tortured and maimed.
Anyaele’s arms were severed above the elbow, while Egbuna’s hands were partially cut off and left permanently useless.
Judge Stephen Adah adjourned the case to September 15 to consider preliminary objections raised by other parties in the case who would challenge the plaintiffs’ right to bring the action and defend the government’s policy.
The court adjourned the case earlier this month after the plaintiffs’ lawyers complained they could not locate Taylor to serve court papers on him.
Taylor has been living under Obasanjo’s protection at a luxury villa in the south-eastern Nigerian city of Calabar.
The two amputees were later given the go-ahead to serve court papers on the former Liberian president through the daily press.
Following the court order, the papers were published in two national dailies and copies were made available to the senior court registrars of the Federal High Court in Abuja and Calabar.
”If you are served with the hearing notice of a matter, it is an indication to you that a case is pending against you and you should come and answer those charges, but he has refused to come,” Ganiyu told reporters.
A Libyan-trained guerrilla, Taylor fought his way to power at the head of a brutal rebel army, then fought the latest in his country’s long line of civil wars before seeing himself confirmed as Liberia’s elected president in 1997.
Soon afterwards Liberia was plunged back into anarchy by a new rebellion.
Taylor, meanwhile, stands accused of backing Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels between 1991 and 2001 in exchange for a share in Sierra Leone’s trade in so-called ”blood diamonds”.
He was forced out of power by a combination of international pressure and the advance of a rebel army on his capital in August last year, and has since been living in comfortable but increasingly isolated exile in Nigeria.
Obasanjo last week defended his decision to protect Taylor, saying his decision to grant him political asylum had helped end Liberia’s latest civil war and allowed a new generation on leaders to embark on a peace process. — Sapa-AFP