Liberian Boycotts War Crimes Trial

Ex-President Taylor Accused of Role in Sierra Leone Force

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor leaves after officially handing over the power of the presidency to his Vice President Moses Blah, in a Monday, Aug 11, 2003 file photo, at the Executive Mansion in the Liberian capital Monrovia. (Ben Curtis - AP)

THE HAGUE, June 4 -- The trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, the highest-ranking African leader to face an international war crimes court, began Monday with the defendant refusing to leave his cell and prosecutors alleging that his fighters hacked off civilians' hands and legs, forced women into sexual slavery and made soldiers of children.

"I choose not to be a fig leaf of legitimacy for this court," Taylor wrote in a letter to the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone here, explaining his boycott of the opening session.

The letter was read aloud in the courtroom by his defense attorney, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan. After collecting his papers and apologizing to the judicial panel, Khan announced his intention to leave the room, saying Taylor had fired him and wanted to conduct his own defense. Presiding Judge Julia Sebutinde, looking stunned and frustrated, protested: "You don't just get up and go. Sanity will return to this court."

But Khan left anyway. He told reporters outside the courtroom that Taylor believes he is being "railroaded" by the court and cannot receive a fair trial. Taylor has denied all the charges against him.

Prosecutors proceeded with their opening statement against Taylor. "As he ignored victims' suffering, he also chooses to ignore the presentation of these crimes," said prosecutor Stephen Rapp. "He has thumbed his nose at this court."

The case against Taylor, 59, is being scrutinized across the African continent, where a dozen countries are attempting to investigate or prosecute former leaders and senior officials for war crimes committed in civil and cross-border conflicts in the final decades of the last century. Taylor orchestrated and financed one of the most brutal wars in modern African history, if the allegations in the 11 charges against him are borne out.

His courtroom maneuvers Monday mimicked tactics used by former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who dragged out his own war crimes trial in The Hague for nearly four years by refusing counsel and repeatedly defying the judicial panel. Milosevic died in his prison cell last year, a few months before his case was scheduled to end.

Prosecutors said the case against Taylor will be legally challenging because Taylor is not on trial for atrocities committed in his own country, Liberia, but for his alleged role in directing a rebel movement that was trying to overthrow the government in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor reportedly never set foot inside Sierra Leone, a small West African country that the United Nations described at the time as one of the poorest nations on Earth.

In 1989, Taylor created a small guerrilla force to try to overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Samuel K. Doe in Liberia. In search of financing for his army, Taylor turned to the diamond mines in Sierra Leone and in 1991 joined forces with a rebel group there, the Revolutionary United Front.

Prosecutors say they will show that in ensuing years he provided the leadership and direction for the RUF guerrillas who brutalized Sierra Leone's civilian population as they looted diamonds to fund the parallel war in Liberia and a luxurious lifestyle for Taylor. He was elected president of Liberia in 1997.

"He's directly responsible, not for pulling the trigger, not for chopping off arms because he did it himself, but because he ordered others to do it," prosecutor Rapp, who served as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, said in an interview.

According to the indictment, Taylor sold the diamonds on behalf of the Sierra Leone rebels and gave them military supplies and equipment in return. Civilians were used as slaves in the mines, guarded by child soldiers high on cocaine and alcohol. The miners often went unfed, were routinely stripped and beaten, and in some instances "killed for being too tired to work," the indictment says.