Ex-Liberian leader to begin his war crimes defense

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — For a year, prosecution witnesses accused former Liberian President Charles Taylor of atrocities ranging from cannibalism to commanding Sierra Leone rebels who hacked off villagers’ limbs, and of selling weapons and ammunition in exchange for so-called blood diamonds.

Now Taylor is giving his version of events at his trial before the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.

“His case is that he was not involved,” Taylor’s British lawyer Courtenay Griffiths told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “That he was a peacemaker, not a warmonger.”

Griffiths will deliver his opening statement Monday and the former president will take the stand Tuesday for what is expected to be weeks of testimony aimed at winning acquittal on 11 charges including murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery and spreading terror.

Prosecutors say Taylor commanded Sierra Leone rebels responsible for the atrocities from his base in the neighboring West African nation of Liberia, where the former warlord was the elected president.

Taylor, the first African head of state to be tried by an international court, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

He 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.

Taylor 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.

A year later, prosecutors rested their case after calling 91 witnesses ranging from high-ranking members of Taylor’s inner circle to victims of atrocities and amputations in Sierra Leone.

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.

“We say and have said all along that they are lying,” Griffiths said of the prosecution witnesses.

It is estimated that about a half-million people were 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 fed drugs to desensitize them to the horror of their actions.

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.

But they are likely to describe international efforts to rein in the atrocities in Sierra Leone and Taylor’s role in the peace process.

Griffiths said Taylor was asked by the 15-member Economic Community of West African States and the United Nations to intervene and that he helped broker a peace deal that briefly halted fighting in 1999 and set up a transitional government.

The top Sierra Leone official at the negotiations in Togo’s capital Lome denies Taylor helped bring about peace.

Former Attorney General and Justice Minister Solomon Berewa said Taylor was uncooperative in the talks.

“He was quite negative,” Berewa said. “Let Taylor be specific on the positive role that he played to bring about peace. All he was doing was to enhance the cause of the rebels.”

Dan Saryee, a rights advocate who runs the pro-democracy Liberia Democratic Institute, also dismissed the idea of Taylor as peacemaker.

“Taylor’s war machinery was never a peacekeeping force; how could it go into Sierra Leone to make peace?” Saryee said. “It is unthinkable.”

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Associated Press Writers Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, contributed to this report.