The United States on Monday called on Nigeria’s government to deliver exiled former Liberian leader Charles Taylor to a United Nations tribunal in Sierra Leone for trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
With prospects again clouded for Taylor’s prosecution for atrocities in Liberia and neighbouring Sierra Leone in the 1990s, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, ”He needs to be brought to justice.”
”It is incumbent upon the Nigerian government now to see that he is conveyed to the international court,” McCormack said. ”Obviously, we have talked to President [Olusegun] Obasanjo about this.”
Obasanjo raised the hopes of international prosecutors that Taylor might soon be brought to court, when his government said on Saturday that Liberia was free to take the suspect ”into custody”.
But Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said Taylor should go to Sierra Leone rather than coming to Liberia where he was not indicted by any court.
”This is right now mainly an issue for the court, for the Liberians as well as the Nigerians to work out in terms of the modalities and all the logistics of moving him from one place to another,” McCormack said.
But he added, ”We have made clear both in public and private to the Nigerians that it is their responsibility to see that he [Taylor] is able to be conveyed and face justice.”
The latest confusion over Taylor’s status arose two days before Obasanjo was to have talks with United States President George Bush on Wednesday in Washington.
Taylor is accused of masterminding a policy of murder, torture, pillage and rape in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where prosecutors have lodged a 17-count indictment alleging crimes against humanity.
In August 2003, in a bid to bring an end to a brutal civil war, Obasanjo invited him to step down as president, leave his besieged capital Monrovia and accept political asylum in Nigeria.
Amid speculation Taylor might slip away to avoid prosecution, officials close to the one-time Liberian strongman said he has remained in his luxury villa in the southeastern Nigerian city of Calabar. – AFP
