Former Liberian president Charles Taylor refused to attend the opening of his war crimes trial on Monday saying in a letter read out in court that he could not expect a fair trial.
”I am driven to conclude that I will not receive a fair trial before the Special Court [for Sierra Leone] at this time and I must decline to attend hearings,” said the letter read out by his defence lawyer Karim Khan.
”I cannot take part in this charade that does injustice to the people of Liberia and the people of Sierra Leone.”
”I have only one counsel to appear on my behalf against nine on the prosecution team. This is neither fair nor just,” Taylor said in the letter.
According to Khan, Taylor also ”terminated his instructions to [his] legal counsel” and asked his defence team to cease to represent him.
”He will represent himself,” Khan told the court.
Taylor (59) faces 11 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 1991 to 2001 civil war in Sierra Leone, considered one of the most brutal in modern history. Up to 200 000 people were killed in the fighting and rebels mutilated thousands more, cutting off arms, legs, ears or noses.
According to the charges against him Taylor armed, trained and controlled Sierra Leone’s notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF), responsible for many of the mutilations, in exchange for still-unknown amounts of diamonds used to fund warfare, the so-called blood diamonds. Taylor has denied all the charges.
Taylor invaded Liberia with a rebel force in 1989 to end a dictatorship and was elected president in 1997. His enemies regrouped abroad and their fighters forced him from Monrovia in 2003, first to refuge in Nigeria.
Taylor was handed over by the Nigerians under international pressure. In the past, ousted African rulers often lived out their lives in comfortable exile.
The Special Court aims to complete Taylor’s trial quickly and hopes to avoid the disappointment felt when former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic died months before a verdict after a trial of more than four years. – Reuters