Liberia's President Charles Taylor CAUGHT UPDATE Not Guilty

Africans Hope Taylor Case Sets Precedent

By DONNA BRYSON, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 1, 3:00 PM ET

A former Chadian military leader accused in the deaths and torture of thousands of opponents lives in this pleasant, seaside capital. An infamous Ethiopian dictator has a haven in Zimbabwe. Uganda's Idi Amin, perhaps the most notorious of all, died peacefully in his place of refuge, Saudi Arabia.

When Africans play "Where are they now?" the answer is rarely "facing justice." But that may be changing.

Hopes have been raised by the case of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president accused of greed and savagery extraordinary even for a continent that has known some of the worst tyrants of modern times. He was extradited Wednesday to face crimes against humanity charges at a U.N.-supported Special Court for his role in fomenting civil wars in Sierra Leone.

Taylor's case warns African leaders to "be very careful how they are governing their people," said Sierra Leonean civil rights activist Abdul Gilles.

Taylor fled to Nigeria in 2003 as part of a deal to end the civil war in Liberia, which he had financed with his trafficking in Sierra Leone's diamonds. Last week Nigeria, under pressure from the U.S. and others, said it would hand him over to the U.N. court. He tried to flee and was recaptured early Wednesday, reportedly with two 110-pound sacks of dollars and euros.

The arrest set the precedent that leaders accused of atrocities "must be judged," said Ismail Hachim, head of a Chadian group working to put their former dictator, Hissene Habre, on trial in Belgium.

Belgium, whose laws empower it to try crimes against humanity wherever they are committed, issued an international arrest warrant for Habre last year, though his Senegalese hosts have resisted pressure to extradite him to Belgium.

Habre was ousted by rebels and fled in 1990. Two years later a commission in Chad accused his regime of 40,000 political killings and 200,000 cases of torture.

As democracy spreads in a continent that used to be a Cold War battlefield, it's getting harder to run a dictatorship.

Nigeria's Olesegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator, is now an elected president who portrays himself as a democrat who respects human rights. Liberia has Africa's first woman president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank technocrat who took office in January pledging reform. Sierra Leone has an elected government.

"The chances each day are greater that if you commit atrocities, you will be brought to book," said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch.

Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga last month became the first suspect to stand before the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. He was charged with war crimes, including recruiting child soldiers. And Jean Kambanda, prime minister of Rwanda at the beginning of that country's 1994 bloodbath, pleaded guilty to genocide before a U.N. tribunal and was jailed for life.

But some of the most notorious have evaded court. The colonial past colors some African attitudes to the West's prescriptions for good governance, and dictators stand together, fearing they could be next to go on trial.

Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia is blamed for the killing of hundreds of students, intellectuals and politicians during the "Red Terror" against supposed enemies of his Soviet-backed military dictatorship. He fled a rebellion in 1991 and was taken in by the authoritarian regime of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. His army had helped train Mugabe's guerrillas in their struggle for independence from white rule.

Mengistu was charged in Ethiopia with crimes against humanity, but Zimbabwe refused to extradite him.

Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia's then-president, cited shared history as anti-colonialists when he granted refuge to Uganda's Milton Obote. Obote had come to power by ousting Amin, and is himself blamed by the current Ugandan current government for more than 500,000 deaths from his urbanization policies in the early 1980s.

Then there's Sudan's Darfur region, which the United Nations has described as the world's gravest humanitarian crisis. Along with tens of thousands of dead, more than 2 million people have been displaced by fighting between ethnic African tribes and the Arab-dominated government and militias it backs.

Some analysts think the refusal by Sudan's leaders to let U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur stems in part from fear they will be pursued for war crimes.
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Associated Press correspondents Angus Shaw in Zimbabwe and Clarence Roy Macauley in Sierra Leone contributed to this report.

As Always, Well wishes,

F. Stanley Boyd


Taylor Pleads Not Guilty to War Crimes


By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor said Monday he did not recognize an international war crimes tribunal's right to try him, but he then pleaded not guilty to 11 counts for helping destabilize West Africa through killings, sexual slavery and sending children into combat.

Taylor is the first former African president to face war crimes charges. He was brought to Sierra Leone last week after briefly escaping custody in Nigeria, where he was staying since 2003 under a deal to end Liberia's civil war.

Security was tight at the Special Court in Sierra Leone, the country to which Taylor is accused of exporting his civil war. Court officials who received death threats and Taylor will be protected by bulletproof glass and dozens of U.N. peacekeepers from Mongolia and Ireland.