Victims of Sierra Leone’s gruesome rebel war on Thursday hailed the arrest of Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor, who is in United Nations custody in Freetown to face charges of crimes against humanity.
Taylor was arrested on Wednesday at the Nigerian border and taken to a detention centre of the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, nearly three years after it indicted him for his alleged role in the 1990s rebel war against the government of Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.
The 58-year-old ex-warlord is to answer charges of manslaughter, maiming, sexual violence, unlawful use of child soldiers and enslavement of tens of thousands of civilians during a 1991-2001 civil war, considered one of the most brutal in modern history.
”I am delighted that Taylor is to stand trial for his crimes,” said Jusu Jarka, chairperson of the Amputees’ Association of Sierra Leone. ”We have suffered a great deal. We were not born like this. Taylor is responsible for our predicament. The ordeal has left wounds in our heart that will not be healed.”
Brima Sheriff, head of a non-governmental organisation called Campaign against Impunity, said: ”Those who were raped and tortured cry for justice. Other rebel leaders should begin to think how they want their revolutions to go.”
”I have no regrets. Let Taylor be tried and jailed and put out of circulation for all time,” said political science lecturer Bai Savage.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday said she would like Taylor to be tried outside of Sierra Leone.
”We still expect a resolution from the UN Security Council that will allow for a change in venue to a more conducive environment, such as the international court in The Hague,” Sirleaf said, a position that the United States has also expressed.
The Sierra Leone court has formally asked The Netherlands to host Taylor’s trial.
Request calls for ”the physical judicial process” to take place in The Netherlands have been noted, ”but it would remain the Sierra Leone tribunal”, Dutch foreign-ministry spokesperson Dirk-Jan Vermeij said, adding that The Netherlands is willing to cooperate if strict conditions are met first.
Taylor is regarded as the single most powerful figure behind a series of civil wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone between 1989 and 2003, which between them left about 400 000 people dead.
The Libyan-trained former guerrilla chieftain is alleged to have sponsored the brutal rebels of the Revolutionary United Front in a war against Tejan Kabbah in return for so-called ”blood-diamonds”.
Chairperson of the Civil Society, Charles Mambu said, ”It is a great victory for Taylor to be detained. I hope it will send the message to other leaders that they are obligated not to violate the human rights of their people or neighbouring countries. Taylor was a problem for west Africa as he destabilised the region. Justice should take hold now.” — Sapa-AFP