Nigeria said Saturday that it would end the asylum of the deposed Liberian dictator Charles G. Taylor and turn him over to the Liberian government for trial. Mr. Taylor, a warlord-turned-president, spawned a bloody cycle of civil wars that killed 300,000 people across West Africa in the 1990's. He was indicted by the United Nations-backed Special Court here in Sierra Leone in 2003 for war crimes and crimes against humanity during this country's decade-long insurgency.
But the court has been unable to arrest Mr. Taylor, who left Liberia as rebels narrowed in on him in 2003. Instead, he went into exile in Nigeria, where authorities agreed in an internationally brokered deal to grant him safe haven in order to end 14 years of civil war in Liberia. "God willing, I will be back," the flamboyant Mr. Taylor said as he bid farewell to his country.
Since agreeing to accept Mr. Taylor, the Nigerian government has rebuffed many attempts to put him on trial before the international court, saying it was awaiting a request from an elected Liberian government. Liberia's new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, raised the issue this month with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, describing it as an important part of bringing stability to Liberia. "Liberia's peace is fragile," she said this month after announcing her extradition request. "There are many loyalists in our country to Mr. Taylor."
In Sierra Leone, where a cell has sat empty awaiting Mr. Taylor's arrival, there was fear and awe of the man who let loose so much misery in a nation smaller than South Carolina and home to five million people. "We are very afraid of Charles Taylor coming here," said Jerry Nyuma Bongay, a 25-year-old student in Freetown. "But we want him to face justice. He hurt us too much."
Desmond De Silva, the chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone court, hailed the announcement. "This is a remarkable day for justice," he said. "This is very important because it is all part of the fight against impunity." In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Obasanjo said Liberia was free to take Mr. Taylor into custody. Although he is not under indictment in Liberia, United Nations peacekeepers there have been authorized by the Security Council to transfer him to Sierra Leone.
The statement gave no date or details for the transfer, but Mr. Obasanjo said he had never been against surrendering Mr. Taylor to a democratically elected government in Liberia. Ms. Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as Liberia's president in January, becoming Africa's first woman to be elected head of state. Mr. Taylor was forbidden from leaving Nigeria during his exile, but he continued to meddle in his former country's affairs from his government guest house in Calabar, on Nigeria's southern coast, using some of the millions of dollars he is accused of stealing from Liberia's coffers.
Security around Mr. Taylor's villa has been lax, said Corinne Dufka, a researcher for Human Rights Watch based in Dakar, Senegal, prompting fears that Mr. Taylor may try to escape. "We are calling on Nigeria to tighten security around Taylor," Ms. Dufka said. "I think there will be a great sense of relief when Charles Taylor is actually in the custody of the special court."
The court, set up in 2000, had issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Taylor on 17 counts in 2003 but Nigeria ignored it. Mr. Obasanjo had said that he would honor a request by Liberia's government to relinquish Mr. Taylor, but until this year Liberia had only transitional leaders. With the backing of Libya and other regional powers, Mr. Taylor unleashed his horrific brand of warfare across the region for the better part of two decades, dragooning young boys into combat, first with violence, then with drugs, money and sex.
In Sierra Leone, he is accused of training and arming Sierra Leone's rebels in a bloody conflict left tens of thousands of people dead.
Source: New York Times
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