Taylor begins his Sierra Leone war crimes defense

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Lawyers for Charles Taylor began his defense against war crimes charges Monday, arguing that the former Liberian president was not responsible for the murder, rape and mutilation of civilians by rebels in Sierra Leone and should not be blamed simply out of disgust at the atrocities.

Taylor, the first African head of state to be tried by an international court, is charged with 11 crimes including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers and spreading terror.

Prosecutors allege that he led rebels responsible for the crimes from his presidential mansion in the Liberian capital of Monrovia as a way of gaining influence over neighboring Sierra Leone so he could strip that country of its vast mineral wealth, an in particular its diamonds.

“No one who has seen the procession through this courtroom of hurt human beings reliving the most grotesque trauma would have been unmoved,” lawyer Courtenay Griffiths told the three-judge panel. “We are human too, even while we declare this accused man to be not guilty of the charges he faces.”

In a year of testimony before the Special Court of Sierra Leone started in January 2008, prosecutors called dozens of villagers, some of them missing their hands, to testify about atrocities committed in Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 war.

Taylor will take the stand in his own defense Tuesday and Griffiths said he would give a detailed account of his version of the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone and his role in them.

“Now he takes the opportunity to put forward his defense, not because in law he has to, but because he feels it is important to set the historical record straight,” Griffiths said.

Wearing a brown double-breasted suit, brown tie and dark glasses, Taylor sat impassively as he listened to Griffiths’ opening statement.

Taylor was forced into exile after being indicted in 2003 and was finally arrested in Nigeria three years later. He was sent for trial in The Hague in June 2006 because officials feared staging the case in Sierra Leone could spark further violence.

He boycotted the start of his trial in June 2007 and fired his attorney, holding up proceedings until January 2008 when prosecutors called their first witness.

Witnesses testified about radio exchanges between Taylor and the rebels, arms smuggled from Liberia to Sierra Leone in sacks of rice and diamonds sent back in a mayonnaise jar. One former aide said he saw Taylor eat a human liver.

About 500,000 people are estimated to be victims of killings, systematic mutilation and other atrocities in Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war. Some of the worst crimes were carried out by gangs of child soldiers, who were fed drugs to desensitize them to the horror of their actions.

But Griffiths said Taylor was not behind the use of children in conflict.

“Child soldiers were not a Charles Taylor invention,” he said.

After Taylor, the defense team has a list of more than 200 witnesses, though not all are expected to testify. Among them are former African heads of state and high-ranking U.N. officials who will testify on his behalf, according to a list that does not name them.

Griffiths aims to portray Taylor as a peacemaker asked by the 15-member Economic Community of West African States and the United Nations to help halt the atrocities in Sierra Leone.