Liberia's Taylor in custody to face war crimes trial

MONROVIA - Ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor was taken to Sierra Leone today to face 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity over a 1991-2002 civil war.

UN officials took custody of Taylor in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, and flew the handcuffed and grim-faced former warlord to Sierra Leone to face a UN-backed special court.

Taylor, 58, was surrounded by a ring of UN troops after arriving in Liberia from Nigeria, where police hours earlier had stopped him from sneaking across the border into Cameroon.

Taylor, whose name is associated with West Africa's most brutal conflicts over more than a decade, was quickly flown by helicopter toward Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital, where the UN-backed court is located.

"I think today is a triumph for international justice ... He will face his day in court," Liberian Solicitor-General Tiawon Gongloe told Reuters at the airport.

Taylor, seen as the mastermind of a web of intertwined regional wars that killed as many as 300,000, is accused of receiving diamonds in exchange for supporting Sierra Leone rebels who often hacked off the limbs of their victims.

His capture eased Nigeria's embarrassment over his escape on Monday from a villa in the southeastern town of Calabar where he had spent two-and-a-half years in exile as part of a 2003 deal to end a civil war in Liberia.

Taylor's unexplained brief disappearance had initially drawn sharp international criticism as Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo began a visit to the United States.

But Obasanjo said in Washington after meeting President George W. Bush he felt vindicated by the capture.

Human rights groups said Taylor's speedy transfer to face justice would send out a strong message on the world's poorest continent, where thousands have endured death and suffering at the hands of dictators, tyrants and warlords.

"Today, Liberia and Sierra Leone are safer and more hopeful places. Today West Africa has moved one step closer to dismantling the devastating grip of impunity," said Corinne Dufka, head of the West Africa office of Human Rights Watch.

In Freetown, Taylor will be held in a special compound guarded by UN troops which houses the Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try those accused of war atrocities in the country. He has not been indicted for any crimes in Liberia.

A first step will be to formally advise Taylor of the charges against him.

"He will have the indictment read to him and doubtless he will have lawyers ... who will seek an adjournment in order to prepare such a defence as he has and that will take some months," the court's chief prosecutor Desmond de Silva said.

Earlier, journalists saw Taylor, dressed in a white safari suit and surrounded by about 20 soldiers, walk onto the tarmac at Maiduguri airport, in Nigeria's far northeast, and board a Nigerian presidential jet for the flight to Monrovia.

Taylor was seized at dawn at the border more than 1,500 km from Calabar, where he had been living in exile.

When he was captured, he was traveling in a jeep with diplomatic plates with a woman and boy, and a large amount of money in dollars in a trunk, local officials said.

Nigeria and Liberia have been at odds over how to handle the case since Liberia's newly elected president asked for him to be handed over in early March.

- REUTERS