Charles Taylor (Liberian politician)
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor is a Liberian former politician. He served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003 as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure. After leaving office, he was found guilty of war crimes committed in the Sierra Leone Civil War, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Born in Arthington, Montserrado County, Liberia, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in the United States before returning to Liberia to work in the government of Samuel Doe. After being removed for embezzlement and imprisoned by President Doe, Taylor escaped prison in 1989. He eventually arrived in Libya, where he was trained as a guerrilla fighter. He returned to Liberia in 1989 as the head of a Libyan-backed rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, to overthrow the Doe government, initiating the First Liberian Civil War. Following Doe's execution, Taylor gained control of a large portion of the country and became one of the most prominent warlords in Africa. His forces, along with those of other rival warlords such as ULIMO, were notorious for committing widespread human rights abuses and atrocities during the civil war. Following a peace deal that ended the war, Taylor was elected president in the 1997 general election as a member of the National Patriotic Party.
During his term in office, Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as a result of his support for the Revolutionary United Front rebel group in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Domestically, Taylor attempted to consolidate power through dictatorial means such as by purging the military and committing violence against his political rivals, including an assassination attempt of former ULIMO commander Roosevelt Johnson, leading to violent clashes in Monrovia in 1998. As a result, opposition to his government grew, culminating in the outbreak of the Second Liberian Civil War in 1999. By 2003, Taylor had lost control of much of the countryside and was formally indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. That year, he resigned as a result of growing international pressure and went into exile in Nigeria. In 2006, the newly elected president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, formally requested his extradition. He was detained by UN authorities in Sierra Leone and then at the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden in The Hague, awaiting trial by the Special Court. He was found guilty in April 2012 of all eleven charges levied by the Special Court, including terror, murder and rape.
In May 2012, Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Reading the sentencing statement, presiding Judge Richard Lussick said: "The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history."
Early life
Taylor was born in Arthington, a town near the capital of Monrovia, Liberia, on 28 January 1948, to Neilson Philip Taylor, an Americo-Liberian, and Yassa Zoe Louise Taylor, a Gola adoptee. His mother Yassa had been taken in by Taylor's grandparents as a domestic servant before becoming romantically involved with his father Neilson later in adulthood. Due to the family's prejudice toward indigenous Liberians, Yassa's first pregnancy, and their marriage that followed, further divided Neilson's family, and Charles, their third-born child, was given to an elderly Americo-Liberian family as a baby to afford him more opportunities. In his early years, he took the name "Ghankay," possibly to please and gain favor with indigenous Liberians. His father, who reportedly worked as a teacher, sharecropper, lawyer, and judge at different tines, was the grandson of an African-American carpenter named Jefferson Bracewell who lived in Valdosta, Georgia, before emigrating to Liberia with his family in December 1871 aboard the ship Edith Rose. The Bracewells were one of the founding families of Arthington and cultivated coffee, cotton, sugarcanes, potatoes, and rice while the women tanned leather, assembled clothing, and weaved their own fabric.In 1977, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States.
Government, imprisonment and escape
Taylor supported the 1980 Liberian coup d'état led by Samuel Doe, which resulted in the murder of President William Tolbert and seizure of power by Doe, who established the People's Redemption Council. Taylor was appointed to the position of Director General of the General Services Agency, a position that left him in charge of purchasing for the Liberian government. He was fired in May 1983 for embezzling an estimated $1 million and sending the funds to another bank account.Taylor fled to the United States but was arrested on 21 May 1984 by two US Deputy Marshals in Somerville, Massachusetts, on a warrant for extradition to face embezzlement charges. Taylor fought extradition with the help of a legal team led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. His lawyers' primary arguments were that his alleged acts of lawbreaking in Liberia were political rather than criminal in nature and that the extradition treaty between the two republics had lapsed. Assistant United States Attorney Richard G. Stearns argued that Liberia wished to charge Taylor with theft in office, rather than with political crimes. Stearns' arguments were reinforced by Liberian Justice Minister Jenkins Scott, who flew to the United States to testify at the proceedings. Taylor was detained in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.
On 15 September 1985, Taylor and four other inmates escaped from the jail. Two days later, The Boston Globe reported that they sawed through a bar covering a window in a dormitory room, after which they lowered themselves on knotted sheets and escaped into nearby woods by climbing a fence. Shortly thereafter, Taylor and two other escapees were met at nearby Jordan Hospital by Taylor's wife, Enid, and Taylor's sister-in-law, Lucia Holmes Toweh. They drove a getaway car to Staten Island in New York, where Taylor disappeared. All four of Taylor's fellow escapees, as well as Enid and Toweh, were later apprehended.
In July 2009, Taylor claimed at his trial that US CIA agents had helped him escape. The US Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed that Taylor first started working with US intelligence in the 1980s but refused to give details of his role or US actions, citing national security.
Civil war
Taylor escaped the United States without issue. He then resurfaced in Libya where he took part in militia training under Muammar Gaddafi, becoming Gaddafi's protégé. He later left Libya and travelled to the Ivory Coast, where he founded the National Patriotic Front of Liberia.In December 1989, Taylor launched a Gaddafi-funded armed uprising from the Ivory Coast into Liberia to overthrow the Doe regime, leading to the First Liberian Civil War. By 1990, his forces controlled most of the country. That same year, Prince Johnson, a senior commander of Taylor's NPFL, broke away and formed the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia.
In September 1990, Johnson captured Monrovia, depriving Taylor of outright victory. Johnson and his forces captured and tortured Doe to death, instigating a violent political fragmentation of the country. The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions among indigenous peoples and the Americo-Liberians fighting for control of Liberia's resources.
Journalist Amos Sawyer alleges that Taylor's aims extended beyond Liberia—that he wanted to re-establish the country as a regional power player. Taylor's ambitions, which were held from the civil war period into his presidency, not only resulted in the domestic Liberian conflict, they also triggered regional instability which manifested itself in the forms of the Sierra Leone Civil War and unrest in the forest region of Guinea.
Presidency
After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor ran for president in the 1997 general election. He campaigned on the notorious slogan "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."The elections were overseen by the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, along with a contingent from the Economic Community of West African States. Taylor won the election in a landslide, garnering 75 percent of the vote. Although the election was generally regarded as free and fair by international observers, Taylor had a significant advantage from the outset. During the civil war, he seized virtually all of the country's radio stations and used his control over the Liberian airwaves to spread propaganda and bolster his image. Additionally, there was widespread fear in the country that Taylor would resume the war if he lost.
During his time in office, Taylor cut the size of the Armed Forces of Liberia, dismissing 2,400–2,600 former personnel, many of whom were ethnic Krahn brought in by former President Doe to give advantage to his people. In 1998, Taylor attempted to murder one of his political opponents, the former warlord Roosevelt Johnson, causing clashes in Monrovia, during and after which hundreds of Krahn were massacred and hundreds more fled Liberia. This event was one of the factors that led to the outbreak of the Second Liberian Civil War.
In 2003, members of the Krahn tribe founded a rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, opposing Taylor. The group disbanded as part of the peace agreement at the end of the second civil war. In its place, Taylor installed the Anti-Terrorist Unit, the Special Operations Division of the Liberian National Police, which he used as his private army.
During his presidency, Taylor was alleged to have been involved directly in the Sierra Leone Civil War. He was accused of aiding the rebel Revolutionary United Front through weapon sales in exchange for blood diamonds. Due to a UN embargo against arms sales to Liberia at the time, these weapons were largely purchased on the black market through arms smugglers such as Viktor Bout. Taylor was charged with aiding and abetting RUF atrocities against civilians, which left many thousands dead or mutilated, with unknown numbers of people abducted and tortured. He was also accused of assisting the RUF in the recruitment of child soldiers. In addition to aiding the RUF in these acts, Taylor reportedly personally directed RUF operations in Sierra Leone.
Taylor obtained spiritual and other advice from the evangelist Kilari Anand Paul. As president, he was known for his flamboyant style. Upon being charged by the UN of being a gunrunner and diamond smuggler during his presidency, Taylor appeared in all-white robes and begged God for forgiveness, while denying the charges. He was reported to have said that "Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time."
During the last four years of Taylor's presidency, he is believed to have stolen and diverted nearly $100 million, amounting to roughly half of total government revenue.