Former West African warlord Charles Taylor received his first private visitors on Wednesday, exactly a week after he was arrested, as an international rights group said he must be treated humanely and given a fair trial for crimes against humanity.
The international community is determined to move former Liberian president Charles Taylor’s war crimes trial to The Netherlands, and will even ensure that his defence witnesses will be able to appear there, a United Nations official said. At his first court appearance on Monday before the UN-backed war crimes court, Taylor had asked through his lawyer that his case remain in Sierra Leone.
Rights groups in Sierra Leone said on Tuesday they feared former Liberian president and warlord Charles Taylor, on trial for crimes against humanity, could undermine — or even escape — international justice. Taylor pleaded not guilty on Monday during his first appearance at a United Nations-backed court to charges including murder, mutilation, sexual slavery and use of child soldiers.
Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor, once one of Africa’s most feared strongmen, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of crimes against humanity over years of atrocities in Sierra Leone. ”Most definitely, I’m not guilty,” Taylor told Judge Richard Lussick at the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.
The trial of the toppled Liberian president accused of backing a bloody rebellion in his neighbour to the north could take months, according to the chief prosecutor at the special United Nations-backed tribunal that will try Charles Taylor. Prosecutor Desmond de Silva also said security concerns had prompted officials a day before to request that the trial be moved to Europe.
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.
United Nations peacekeepers escorted the captured former Liberian president Charles Taylor into jail on Wednesday at the Sierra Leone tribunal where he is wanted for trial on war-crimes charges. Taylor, handcuffed and looking dejected, was led behind a razor-wired gate into the holding penitentiary where nine other defendants in Sierra Leone’s brutal 1989-2002 civil war are held.
No image available
/ 24 December 2005
Liberia’s president-elect Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said on Friday she’s deliberating on what should be done about former warlord Charles Taylor, who is in exile in Nigeria but wanted in Sierra Leone on war-crimes charges. Nigeria granted Taylor asylum in 2003 in part to help end Liberia’s own 1989-2003 armed struggle.
UN Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour on Saturday stepped up pressure on Nigeria to extradite former Liberian leader Charles Taylor to stand trial at a UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone.
The prosecutor at the war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone on Monday accused former Liberian president Charles Taylor of backing a January assassination bid against his longtime adversary Lansana Conte, President of Guinea. Taylor was granted asylum in Nigeria in August 2003 after stepping down to end a seven-year civil war in Liberia.
Tax officials in Sierra Leone have infuriated Christians with the publication on Monday of newspaper advertisements saying Jesus Christ supported the paying of taxes. The half-page advertisements quoted Jesus’s reply when he was asked if he was against a law requiring the payment of taxes to the Roman emperor.
The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone may be preparing for the final pullout of its peacekeeping force by the end of the year, but it seems, the mission wants to leave behind a clean record, in so far as sexual exploitation and abuse is concerned. This follows a number of of cases of sexual exploitation in the four years that the peacekeepers have been staying in Sierra Leone.
Libya and Liberia should pay reparations to Sierra Leone for backing rebels who waged one of the most savage wars in modern history, an independent truth and reconciliation commission said in a report on Friday. ”Libya … should make financial contributions to the War Victims Fund,” the commission said.
When former Liberian president Charles Taylor armed Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front and supported their rebel war, he had powerful regional connections, a star prosecution witness told a United Nations-backed war-crimes tribunal. In two days of testimony, Brigadier John Tarnue told the court of meetings that laid the groundwork for Taylor’s engagement in the war.
Winstanley Johnson will probably go down in history for the fact that earlier this year, he became the first elected mayor in 30 years of Sierra Leone’s capital — Freetown. As he picks his way around the rubbish heaps in the city, however, there may well be times when he wonders whether it’s worth having this honour.
Angry Sierra Leoneans are demanding that their government ask Guinea to withdraw its troops from their territory, which they occupied five years ago. Troops from Guinea occupied the eastern border town of Yenga during Sierra Leone’s civil war between the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front and government forces.
Ravaged by civil war for almost a decade, Sierra Leone’s fragile stability faces a new threat from drugs. Police say that their eradication campaign is bearing fruit, but some social workers believe that more needs to be done to secure an enduring peace.
While the number of legally exported diamonds from Sierra Leone had increased, reports indicate 40% of diamonds leaving the country were smuggled out. Blood diamonds funded fighting in Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the civil war which ended two years ago. The government eventually clamped down on the illegal trade through the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme.
A United Nations helicopter on a routine flight in eastern Sierra Leone crashed into a hillside on Tuesday, killing all 24 people on board, a UN spokesperson said. The helicopter, belonging to the Siberian-based UT Air charter company, was on a routine morning flight.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor could be brought to trial in the near future if the government of Liberia issues a request, said United Nations officials visiting the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, on Friday. Taylor left Liberia on August 11 for exile in Nigeria.
"I will be defending myself because as far as I am concerned, I don’t have any case to answer before this court," said Sam Hinga Norman, on Monday. Although the court officially opened its doors in March, the former deputy defence minister of Sierra Leone and coordinator of the tribal militias known as the "Kamajors" is the first suspect to go on trial at its specially-built premises in the country’s capital — Freetown.
The United Nations-backed court for Sierra Leone, which is to try those who allegedly bear the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed in a decade of civil war, officially opened on Thursday. Three former heads of a pro-government militia during the war appeared in court for the opening trial.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor lost an appeal on Monday when the war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone ruled that he can be prosecuted by the court. The United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal said in its ruling that Liberia’s former president ”was and is subject to criminal proceedings before the special court”.
The United Nations-backed war crimes court for Sierra Leone, which was due to rule on Friday on whether former Liberian president Charles Taylor will stand trial on charges he aided rebels in their decade-long war in the West African state, has delayed its decision, a court spokesperson said.
Local elections aren’t a rarity, some would claim. But, they are if you live in Sierra Leone and have not had a say about local councillors in three decades. That the elections are happening is the good news. The bad news is that the contest is not going to be a pretty one.
It was not enough for Charles Taylor to plunder his own West African state of Liberia, encourage rebellion in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire and make Guinea anxious about its own potential for revolution. Taylor also chose to arm and train the notorious Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, Liberia’s eastern neighbour, in exchange for still-unknown amounts of ”blood diamonds”.
No image available
/ 26 February 2004
Authorities in Sierra Leone have started a campaign to rid the country of its so-called ”pepper doctors”: people who practise medicine under false pretences. The pharmacy board recently joined forces with police to raid the premises of suspected pepper doctors in the capital, Freetown, and elsewhere.
No image available
/ 5 February 2004
Sierra Leone this week completed a five-year programme to disarm and rehabilitate more than 70Â 000 combatants who took part in the country’s brutal civil war. President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah officially dissolved the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration at a ceremony on Tuesday.
No image available
/ 30 January 2004
Sub-Saharan Africa’s first psychiatric hospital, built in 1827 in Sierra Leone, is to get a badly-needed makeover with a loan from the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank, Sierra Leone officials said on Thursday.
No image available
/ 19 January 2004
A seemingly intractable dispute is under way in Sierra Leone between hawkers and those who are tired of weaving their way through the teeming roadside markets that have sprung up in the capital. Authorities recently launched a programme called Operation Free Flow to clear Freetown’s streets of vendors.
No image available
/ 16 January 2004
A lengthy disarmament programme has wrapped up in Sierra Leone, with organisers giving themselves a pat on the back. ”I think that the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants have been a success,” said Francis Kaikai, executive secretary of the programme.
No image available
/ 5 December 2003
It is a measure of the frustration people in Sierra Leone feel about corruption that a rap album dealing with this subject has topped the country’s music charts. Sierra Leone has become notorious for widespread corruption in the public and private sectors and the public has lost confidence in an anti-corruption commission.