Taylor quits Sierra Leone for Hague war crimes trial

By Christo Johnson

FREETOWN (Reuters) – War crimes court officials flew former
Liberian President Charles Taylor out of Sierra Leone on a
charter jet on Tuesday bound for trial at The Hague.

Taylor faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against
humanity for backing Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front
rebels whose drugged child soldiers killed, mutilated and raped
civilians during the West African country’s 1990s civil war.

Taylor was flown in a U.N. helicopter to the country’s main
airport at Lungi from the compound of the U.N.-backed Special
Court for Sierra Leone, which has charged him with war crimes
and will conduct his trial in The Hague.

“He’s in a plane headed for the Netherlands. He left Lungi
International Airport at 9:40 this morning,” said court
spokesman Peter Andersen.

“I talked to Mr Taylor briefly. We didn’t discuss his case,
we joked around a little bit and I wished him a safe journey,”
Andersen said.

Asked about Taylor’s mood, he said: “It’s difficult to tell
– he looked very serious.”

The Freetown-based court said its registrar, security chief
and medical officer had accompanied Taylor on the flight.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said Taylor would be held at the
detention unit of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in
Scheveningen.

“This means that the focus can now be on the trial against
Taylor, who is accused of serious war crimes,” Foreign Minister
Ben Bot said in a statement.

“This is a signal from the international community that
exemption from punishment will not be tolerated,” Bot added.

MIXED REACTIONS

Sierra Leone’s Vice-President Solomon Berewa welcomed the
news.

“We are now satisfied that he is going to be tried in a
well secured area by the Netherlands while we in Sierra Leone
and the Mano River Union states will continue to consolidate
our peace,” Berewa told Reuters.

The Mano River Union groups Sierra Leone, Liberia and
Guinea, which were all dragged into a spiral of violence in the
14 years after Taylor began Liberia’s civil war in 1989.

“All I think Sierra Leoneans were interested in was to see
Taylor arrested and charged, which has been done,” Berewa
added.

But Taylor’s half-brother Adolphus Taylor was disappointed.

“We are downhearted. They had told us that Mr Taylor will
be transferred on Wednesday but instead they transferred him
today. We just don’t know what’s happening. We do not know
whether he will get a fair trial,” he told Reuters in Monrovia.

Years of war in Liberia finally came to an end after Taylor
agreed to go into exile in Nigeria in 2003.

Caught trying to leave Nigeria earlier this year as
pressure mounted for him to be tried, Taylor was transferred to
the Special Court and charged.

But Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf expressed
concerns that Taylor’s presence in the region could encourage
instability in Liberia, where he retains some support.

The Netherlands agreed to host the trial after Britain
promised last week to hold Taylor in jail if he received a
prison sentence.

Court spokesman Anderson said defense and prosecution
lawyers would still hold a pre-trial meeting already organized
for Wednesday in Freetown, although he could not say when
Taylor would appear in court in The Hague.

(Additional reporting by Nicola Leske in Amsterdam and
Alphonso Toweh in Bo Waterside, Liberia)