Liberian Boycotts War Crimes Trial

As the war progressed, Sierra Leone's guerrillas, sometimes assisted by soldiers from Taylor's Liberian army, waged ominously titled campaigns such as "Operation No Living Thing" and "Operation Pay Yourself."

"Entire villages were burned down," according to the indictment. "It was common practice to burn the houses with civilians inside them, with armed guards on standby ready to shoot anyone trying escape from the burning buildings."

In numerous cases, "Victims were forced to strip naked and were sexually violated in public areas," the indictment said. "Family members were often forced to watch or participate." Hundreds of women and girls were forced into sexual slavery as the "bush wives" of soldiers and commanders in the field.

A trademark of the Sierra Leone guerrilla forces was amputations -- soldiers hacked off arms, fingers, hands, legs, feet, lips and ears by the thousands, according to prosecutors. After some operations, scores of victims streamed into overcrowded hospitals with bleeding stumps, the prosecution said.

Children, some 14 and younger, were organized into Small Boy Units and Small Girl Units and sent to training camps, which were brutally run. Prosecutors described exercises in which children were taught to crawl to avoid bullets during firefights, with instructors using live ammunition. Children who raised their heads were shot dead as examples to the others, prosecutors said at Monday's hearing.

Taylor's written defense in response to the indictment denies that he oversaw any of the atrocities or could have stopped Sierra Leone's rebels from engaging in them.

Taylor's trial is being conducted in The Hague rather than in Sierra Leone because the Freetown government was worried that Taylor's supporters could use the proceeding as an excuse to launch another insurgency or create other chaos.

Before walking out Monday, Taylor's court-appointed attorney reiterated that the defense team is outnumbered and outgunned by the prosecution. The presiding judge Monday agreed with Taylor's team that he had been denied access to one of his key defense attorneys in Sierra Leone and ordered the court to pay to fly that lawyer to The Hague.

Later in the day, the court adjourned until June 25, when it will begin hearing the first of 150 prosecution witnesses in the case. Legal experts predict the trial will last about 18 months, followed by several more months of deliberation by the judges.

Rapp said Monday that a judgment "will not bring back the dead from their graves, nor give back limbs to the thousands of amputees," but would give "some small measure of closure" to the people of Sierra Leone.