Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has formally asked Nigeria to hand over her exiled predecessor Charles Taylor, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday.
Taylor, who has been accused of committing war crimes by international prosecutors in Sierra Leone, was given political asylum by Obasanjo in August 2003 and has been living in a luxury villa in the Nigerian city of Calabar.
Obasanjo’s spokesperson Remi Oyo said in a statement that Johnson-Sirleaf had asked Nigerian to return Taylor and that the president would give his response to the request after consulting fellow African leaders.
Oyo said Obasanjo would talk with Congo’s President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who is the chairperson of the African Union (AU) and Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja, chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
“The president has indicated that Nigeria will take a decision on the Liberian government’s request based on the views of the AU and Ecowas and give an appropriate response,” she said.
The statement noted that the previous AU and Ecowas chairperson had been party to the agreement under which Taylor fled Monrovia in 2003 and allowed the United Nations to oversee a peace process to bring an end to 14 years of civil war.
Obasanjo has previously said that if an elected Liberian government, such as the one formed by Johnson-Sirleaf in January, asked for Taylor to be returned to his homeland that he would honour the request.
He has refused demands from a UN-backed tribunal in Liberia’s neighbour Sierra Leone to send Taylor there to face a series of charges of crimes against humanity, but the Liberian leader is now reportedly ready to send him there. – AFP