The
first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II was
sentenced to 50 years in prison Wednesday by an international court in The
Hague, Netherlands.
The
Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor last month
of supplying and encouraging rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone in a campaign
of terror, involving murder, rape, sexual slavery and the conscription children
younger than 15.
He
was also found guilty of using Sierra Leone's diamond deposits to help fuel its
civil war with arms and guns while enriching himself with what have commonly
come to be known as "blood diamonds."
Taylor
directed his gaze downward while Presiding Judge Richard Lussick read the
sentencing statement, which began with a horror cabinet of carnage committed in
Sierra Leone by rebels from the Revolutionary United Front, which the former
president backed.
"The accused has been found responsible for aiding and
abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes
recorded in human history," said Lussick, who described one RUF military
operation as the "indiscriminate killing of anything that moved."
He
spoke of amputations with machetes -- some carried out by child soldiers forced
to do so -- and read accounts by witnesses who suffered under the violence.
"Witness
TF1064 was forced to carry a bag containing human heads," Lussick said.
"On the way, the rebels ordered her to laugh as she carried the bags
dripping with blood."
Upon
arrival, "the bag was emptied, and she saw the heads of her
children."
A
former child soldier, conscripted at age 12, in his testimony told of
"having the letters RUF carved into his chest," Lussick said.
"When ordered on a food-finding mission to rape an old woman they found at
a farmhouse, the boy cried and refused, for which he was punished."
The
prosecution had asked the Special Court for Sierra Leone to sentence Taylor,
who was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, to 80 years behind bars, but
the judges found the recommendation "excessive," citing the
"limited scope" of the conviction in key attacks.
The
prosecutors had failed to prove that Taylor assumed direct command over rebels
who committed atrocities.
There
is no death penalty in international criminal law, and Taylor, 64, will serve
out his sentence in a British prison.
The former Liberian president is appealing his conviction
and will receive credit for time already served since his apprehension in March
2006.
The
atrocities he was convicted of supporting occurred over the course of five
years -- almost his entire presidency -- and reached a peak in 1998 and 1999.
Sierra Leone's civil war lasted from 1991 to 2002, ultimately leaving 50,000
dead or missing.
Although
Taylor was not on the battlefield in Sierra Leone, the court saw his position
of power as president of the neighboring country and the use of his own military's
capabilities to stoke up RUF rebels as making him directly responsible for the
bloodshed he encouraged.
Taylor
does not see himself as a war criminal but as a victim -- a leader wronged by
corruption and a hypocritical hand of justice with a political agenda.
"I
never stood a chance," he said last week during his final courtroom stand.
"Only time will tell how many other African heads of state will be
destroyed."
Taylor
accused the United States government of throwing the trial by paying prosecutors
millions of dollars and claimed that witnesses had been bought.
He
has expressed no remorse and insisted his intent was far from what had been
portrayed by prosecutors. He has described himself as a peacemaker, saying he
should be spared a harsh sentence.
His
defense attorneys pointed to the former Liberian president's role in the peace
process that ended the civil war as a mitigating factor in his sentencing.
But
after lengthy consideration, the panel of judges -- which in addition to
Lassick included Judge Teresa Doherty and Judge Julia Sebutinde -- did not buy
it.
"While
Mr. Taylor publicly played a substantial role in this process ... secretly, he
was fuelling hostilities," Lassick said, supplying rebels with arms and
ammunition.
Last
month's landmark ruling by the Special Court for Sierra Leone against Taylor
was the first war crimes conviction of a former head of state by an
international court since the Nuremberg trials after World War II that
convicted Adm. Karl Doenitz, who became president of Germany briefly after
Adolf Hitler's suicide.
Former
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was tried by an international tribunal,
but he died before a judgment was issued.
Taylor,
64, was found guilty of all 11 counts of aiding and abetting the deadly rebel
campaign in Sierra Leone.
He
was a pivotal figure in Liberian politics for decades and was forced out of
office under international pressure in 2003. He fled to Nigeria, where border
guards arrested him three years later as he was attempting to cross into Chad.
The
United Nations and the Sierra Leone government jointly set up the special
tribunal to try those who played the biggest role in the atrocities. The court
was moved to the Netherlands from Sierra Leone, where emotions about the civil
war still run high.
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