Charles Taylor, Liberia’s exiled former warlord and president wanted internationally on crimes against humanity charges, was set to return on Saturday after Nigeria agreed to his extradition.
Taylor (58) gained notoriety for plundering his own West African state, encouraging rebellion in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire and making Guinea anxious about its own potential for revolution.
He also armed and trained the notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s eastern neighbour, in exchange for still-unknown amounts of ”blood diamonds”, fuelling a 10-year conflict that left more than 200 000 dead and thousands more with missing limbs.
Comparing himself to Jesus as he finally yielded to massive international pressure to step down from the presidency he claimed in 1997 after a seven-year rebellion, Taylor, a charismatic showman, asked Liberia to treat him kindly in the annals of history as he went into ayslum in Nigeria in 2003.
His fortunes changed when President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf came to power last November and she demanded he be extradited.
”We hope action will be taken not only to ensure Mr Taylor the day in court which he has asked for or to ensure that he does so in an environment that is free and fair to him and that enables him the full right of self-defence,” Johnson-Sirleaf said this week after meeting United States President George Bush.
”The longer we wait to bring this matter to closure, the more difficult it will be for us to move forward as a nation and as a people.”
Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo invited Taylor to Nigeria in order to bring an end to a 14-year-civil war which pitched the guerrilla chief turned elected ruler against two powerful rebel groups.
He has been living in the southeastern Nigerian city of Calabar in the palatial Solomon Unoh House, a colonial-era mansion with dramatic riverside views, surrounded by gaudy souvenirs of his time in office, including gifts from foreign leaders.
He kept a moderately low profile, as required by his hosts, although an Agence France-Presse reporter who visited his villa this week and met him briefly found that he had access to a Jaguar saloon car with blacked out windows and diplomatic plates and carried a battery of cellphones.
Prosectors have alleged — to furious Nigerian denials — that Taylor has continued to meddle in Liberian and West African politics.
On Saturday, Obasanjo concurred with growing international pressure for the handover, saying ”Liberia is free to take former president Charles Taylor into custody”.
If it is up to the prosecutor of the Special Court in Sierra Leone, Taylor will spend the remaining days of his life in prison, convicted of 17 counts of crimes against humanity that include rape, murder and terrorism.
Born January 28, 1948, the thrice-married lay preacher obtained a degree at a university in the northeastern US state of Massachusetts, and rose to power on the backs of thousands who died during the rebellion he launched in 1989 against military ruler Samuel Doe.
Doe was the first Liberian-born leader of the republic which was settled in the early 19th century by freed American slaves.
After graduation in 1977, Taylor joined the Liberian civil service under Doe, who himself seized power in 1980.
He was sacked in 1983 for embezzling nearly $1-million in government funds and skipped the country, returning to the United States where he was jailed on an extradition warrant.
He escaped 16 months later and promptly disappeared, surfacing in December 1989 at the head of a rebellion backed by Libya and reportedly by Burkina Faso.
His National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) earned a reputation for extreme violence and was among the first to force children, some as young as age 10, into carrying guns.
Seven years of bloody war wearied the Liberian population, who voted en masse in 1997 to send Taylor to the presidency, but his rise to power brought little relief to the Atlantic coastal state of 3,3-million.
Two years later, a second rebellion took place, this time against Taylor and his rapacious armies. Fighting was finally brought to an end when Taylor fled to Nigeria. – Sapa-AFP