29 March International Press Clips

[The press clips do not necessarily represent the views of UNMIL.]

International Clips on Liberia

Taylor Sent Off to Face War Crimes Charges
By BASHIR ADIGUN

Source: AP Online Regional - Africa
Date: March 29, 2006
ABUJA, Nigeria_Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, captured on the run in Nigeria with his family and sacks full of cash, was flown to Sierra Leone on Wednesday to face trial on war crimes charges.

Taylor was captured Tuesday night by security forces in the far northeastern border town of Gamboru, in Borno State, nearly 600 miles from the villa in southern Calabar from which he reportedly disappeared Monday night, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement. He was trying to cross the border into Cameroon.

Taylor was flown to the Liberian capital Wednesday and then immediately taken by U.N. helicopter to Sierra Leone, where a U.N.-backed tribunal will try him on war crimes charges, witnesses said.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was visiting the White House, gave few details about Taylor's arrest except to say he was picked up in a car with his wife and taken to a regional state capital.

President Bush said he appreciated Nigeria's work in apprehending Taylor.

"The fact that Charles Taylor will be brought to justice in a court of law will help Liberia and is a sign of your deep desire for there to be peace in your neighborhood," Bush told Obasanjo in an Oval Office meeting.

A Nigerian police official said Taylor was in a vehicle with his son, an aide and a local guide when arrested. They also were carrying two 110-pound sacks filled with U.S. and European currency, Alhaji Mohammed Aminu Bello said.

Taylor and his son were taken into custody while the others were let go, Bello said.

Taylor then was flown on a plane bearing a Nigerian flag to Monrovia, Liberia, where hundreds of U.N. troops patrolled. Dozens of elite Irish troops in armored personnel carriers parked their vehicles on the airstrip.

There are 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had said she did not want Taylor because his presence could destabilize her fragile country as it takes its first steps toward rebuilding since she was installed in January.

Police swinging batons beat journalists back from the airstrip as dignitaries rushed to meet the plane. The head of Liberian state media, Charles Smetter, said Taylor _ wearing a gray safari suit and looking somber _ then boarded a U.N. helicopter that Liberia's defense minister said would fly Taylor to Sierra Leone.

Diplomats and court staff at the tribunal in Freetown, Sierra Leone, gathered near a helipad next to the facility's prison, which houses other defendants. Top prosecutor Desmond de Silva said he was confident that Taylor soon would be behind bars.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters "it's a great relief that he's been recaptured."

"I think his capture and being put on trial does not only close a chapter, but it also sends a powerful message to the region that impunity will not be allowed to stand and would-be warlords will pay a price," Annan said.

Taylor disappeared just days after Nigeria, which had granted him asylum under a 2003 agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war, bowed to pressure to surrender Taylor to face justice before the tribunal.

All 22 Nigerian police officers responsible for guarding Taylor have been arrested, the Nigerian government said Tuesday.

The admission that Taylor had slipped away came an hour before Obasanjo left Nigeria to meet with Bush. The White House had suggested the meeting might be canceled if Nigeria's leader did not have some answers about Taylor's disappearance.

Obasanjo said the mood of the White House encounter had "changed drastically" as a result of Taylor's arrest.

"I feel vindicated," Obasanjo said as he rejected the notion that Nigerian authorities may have been complicit in Taylor's escape.

Those who spread such ideas "are wrong and owe an apology."

"If we had been negligent, then Charles Taylor would have got away," Obasanjo said. "He would not have been arrested if there was negligence."
Nigeria announced last week it would hand Taylor over to the tribunal to be tried for alleged war crimes related to Sierra Leone's 1991-2001 civil war, but the government made no moves to arrest him before he disappeared.

Taylor, a one-time warlord and rebel leader, is charged with backing Sierra Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.

While the Sierra Leone tribunal's charges refer only to the war there, Taylor also has been accused of starting civil war in Liberia and of harboring al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people.

Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But after Sirleaf asked Saturday that Taylor be handed over for trial, Obasanjo agreed.

Security officials in Liberia said they had arrested several Taylor supporters, allegedly for holding secret meetings to plot how Taylor could avoid standing trial.

Many of Taylor's loyalist soldiers are believed to be roaming freely in Liberia, Sierra Leone and civil-war divided Ivory Coast, from where Taylor launched his rebel incursion into Liberia on Dec. 24, 1989.

Taylor arrives in Liberia, boards UN helicopter for Sierra Leone

MONROVIA, March 29, 2006 (AFP) - Former Liberian president and war crimes suspect Charles Taylor, captured in Nigeria, arrived in Liberia on Wednesday under tight security and immediately boarded a United Nations helicopter expected to take him to Sierra Leone, AFP correspondents at the airport said.

Taylor, a warlord turned president who had fled to exile in Nigeria, has been indicted by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity committed during a 1991-2001 civil war there that claimed up to 200,000 lives.

A Nigerian presidential jet landed in heavy rain at the tightly guarded Roberts International Airport in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, shortly after 4:30 pm (1630 GMT) and was immediately surrounded by UN security forces.

Taylor disembarked, surrounded by government and UN security officials, and was led to a waiting helicopter.

Journalists were kept 200 metres (yards) away and were unable to see if Taylor was in handcuffs or not.

The UN announced earlier on Wednesday that it was ready to arrest Taylor on his arrival in Liberia and transfer him to the Special Court in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Taylor was flown to Monrovia from Nigeria's northeastern town of Maiduguri, after he was captured early on Wednesday trying to flee the country following the Nigerian government's decision to extradite him.

BBC Last Updated: Wednesday, 29 March 2006, 15:08 GMT 16:08 UK
West Africa's wars catch up with Taylor
By Elizabeth Blunt
BBC Africa analyst

Charles Taylor is being deported to Liberia, but it is not Liberia which has a warrant out for his arrest.

UN forces in the country have a mandate to hand him over for trial by the special war crimes court in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The charges against the former Liberian president relate to the much wider conflict in West Africa, which started in 1989 with the rebellion he backed in Liberia, but later spread to engulf the whole region.

Sierra Leone saw some of the worst atrocities. The war there started just over a year after the war in Liberia.

The basis of the charges against Charles Taylor is the belief that he was the moving force behind that conflict.

The leader of the rebellion, Foday Sankoh, was an old friend of his, and a number of his Liberian fighters also fought with Mr Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

The RUF used Liberia as their rear base; it was through Liberia that they sold their diamonds and got their arms.

End of impunity?
Liberia under Mr Taylor's leadership was a source of instability for Guinea and the Ivory Coast as well, and kept the regional organisation, Ecowas, in a constant state of crisis.

So other west African leaders probably breathed a sigh of relief when he was taken out of circulation and went into exile in Nigeria.

But his impending transfer to the court also has implications for the worldwide move to hold heads of state accountable for crimes committed during their time in power.

In the past, African leaders, even if they got forced out of office as result of their own excesses, could usually rely on their fellow presidents to protect them and offer them comfortable homes in exile.

A successful prosecution of Charles Taylor would signal that that era may be coming to an end.

Disaster to triumph
Mr Taylor was arrested in north-eastern Nigeria after he disappeared from the villa where he was being held under virtual house arrest.

TAYLOR TIMELINE
1997: Elected Liberian president after leading rebellion
1991-2002: Alleged role in Sierra Leone's civil war
June 2003: Arrest warrant issued by Sierra Leone tribunal
August 2003: Begins exile in Nigeria after civil war at home
March 2006: Detained by Nigeria while fleeing

A Nigerian police spokesman has said Mr Taylor was arrested at a border crossing point on the route which leads to Cameroon and Chad.

The Nigerian authorities said on Tuesday he had disappeared the previous evening from the house in Calabar which had been his home since he was forced out of power in 2003.

It had looked like a disaster for the Nigerian authorities, on the eve of their president's visit to Washington - an internationally wanted war criminal disappearing from under their noses the very day after the special court prosecutor warned he might try to escape.

Now, it seems more like a triumph.

Mr Taylor was identified and arrested by security forces when he turned up at the border, despite the fact that he was using a border crossing as far as possible from the place where he vanished.

Obasanjo's obligations
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered his immediate repatriation to Liberia.

And so, when Mr Obasanjo meets George W Bush this afternoon, he will be able to assure the US president that Nigeria has finally and fully complied with their demands for Mr Taylor's surrender.

And he will even be able to do so without compromising his earlier positions.

A Nigerian government spokesman in London said that for Mr Taylor to have left Calabar and be found at the northern border was obviously a violation of his conditions for staying in Nigeria.

So President Obasanjo is now no longer likely to feel bound either by any guarantees of protection which he had given to Mr Taylor, or by his more recent insistence that Mr Taylor would only be surrendered if the Liberian authorities came to collect him.

Bush: U.S. welcomes capture of Charles Taylor
By GEORGE GEDDA

Source: English General News
Date: March 29, 2006
WASHINGTON President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he appreciates the government of Nigeria's work to apprehend Charles Taylor, a warlord and rebel leader charged with crimes related to Sierra Leone's 14-year civil war.

"The fact that Charles Taylor will be brought to justice in a court of law will help Liberia and is a signal, Mr. President, of your deep desire for there to be peace in your neighborhood," Bush told Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in an Oval Office meeting.

The West African leader said he rejected claims that Nigerian authorities may have been complicit in the escape Tuesday of Taylor, the former Liberian president who was living in exile in Nigeria.

"I do not agree, must disagree that we have been negligent in the way we handled the Charles Taylor issue," Obasanjo said.

In 2003, Obasanjo cut a deal that allowed Taylor to settle in Nigeria. Recently, he agreed to a request by Liberia's new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to surrender Taylor for trial at the international criminal tribunal in Sierra Leone.

Taylor is charged with backing Sierra Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.

"If we had been negligent, then Charles Taylor would have got away," Obasanjo said in his defense. "He would not have been arrested if there was negligence."

Bush said the two leaders also talked about Darfur and the Sudan, and an international response in helping end a 21-year civil war. The U.N. Security Council voted last week to keep U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan to monitor an accord ending the civil war and authorized planning for the expected extension of the U.N. force's operations to Darfur.

"I made it very clear to him (Obasanjo) that we are deeply concerned about the humiliation, the rape, the murder that is taking place among the _ against the citizens of Darfur. He agreed," Bush said.

Bush said he has made it clear to the Sudanese government that there will be an international response in working toward peace.

"We talked about a dual track, that the rebels must come together and negotiate with the government, and at the same time we talked about bolstering the AU (African Union) peacekeeping force with a blue helmet force, and I explained my desire to have a NATO overlay, to make sure that force is robust," Bush said.

Bush said he also asked Obasanjo about conditions in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta. Obasanjo has been criticized for failing to control militants who have launched increasing attacks on oil facilities in the area. Nigeria is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

"We are very grateful that the measures we are taking, which are essentially socio-economic measures, to address some of the grievances, identified grievances will resolve the issue of the Niger Delta."

The Nigerian leader said he also talked to Bush about West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, where an oil boom could outpace Middle East exports to the United States in a decade. The United States are wary about the security of increasingly strategic part of the world that some U.S. officials believe is vulnerable to piracy, political instability and terrorism.

Obasanjo said he talked to Bush about how he is working to establish a Gulf of Guinea commission to address any misunderstandings between Nigeria and other countries in the Gulf and how activity in the region can be monitored.

The top news at the meeting, however, was Taylor's arrest while he was trying to cross Nigeria's southern border with Cameroon. Talking to reporters before the meeting, Obasanjo gave few details about the apprehension except to say that he was picked up in a car with his wife and taken to a regional state capital.