“Lies!  Lies!  And more lies!” is the mantra of former Liberian President Charles Taylor regarding accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Having finally taken the stand in his own defense in The Hague, he is denying all responsibility for the atrocities that took place during the civil war that tore through Sierra Leone from 1991-2000.  He is, in fact, portraying himself as a man who worked hard to keep a pan-African vision alive, someone who only had the best interest of his country—and Africa as a whole—at heart.

This is despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Clearly, it was Taylor’s friendship with Revolutionary United Front (RUF) founder Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone that got him involved with the civil war at first, but that does not in any way absolve him.  The choices he made in funding the RUF and ensuring that they were adequately armed would be enough to hold him as a criminal.   That he used Liberian rebel soldiers in Sierra Leone, a country in which he had no legal business getting involved, makes him guilty of international crimes.

One witness told of the rebels coming to the town of Koidu in the Kono district.  He heard them speaking a dialect that is distinctly Liberian, and not the Sierra Leonean Creole.  Another witness told the court that he delivered diamonds to Taylor in exchange for guns and ammunition.  This is proof of Taylor’s involvement in arming the rebels and the trade of blood diamonds. 

Taylor’s response to this is that, “This never happened…I never received diamonds from the RUF.  There’s not a human who believes in the truth that diamonds were given for arms.”  Mr. Taylor is clearly wrong on this count.  If no one believed it possible, he wouldn’t be on trial.  But his tactic is deny, deny, deny.  When confronted with the notion that he had high-ranking officials executed because they could bear witness to his involvement with the RUF, he said that they were only killed “after facing military tribunals” and convicted of committing war crimes.

There is plenty of evidence to support Taylor’s encouragement of RUF soldiers to murder, rape, mutilate, and terrorize the people of Sierra Leone, forcing women into sexual slavery and turning children into soldiers.  Taylor himself entered Sierra Leone at one point to see the Yengema diamond fields.  It was very clear that his motivation in helping Sierra Leone tear itself apart was to gain unfettered access to the country’s natural diamond wealth. 

Unfortunately, rumors about Taylor during and after his reign of terror turned from the factual to the ridiculous.  Stories circulated about him eating the hearts of babies and stringing human intestines across checkpoints.  It is the fiction that can sabotage the facts.  While it is not altogether unlikely that some of the more savage rebels might string human intestines around or put the heads of the non-compliant on poles as a warning to others, those acts, while funded by Taylor, were not directly committed by Taylor.

Fortunately, the court considers the funding and arming of the RUF to be deplorable and punishable.  Should they find him guilty, he can face several lifetimes in prison.  It is beneficial to him to be tried in The Hague, as any trial in Sierra Leone or Liberia would likely cause rioting, picketing, and assassination attempts. 

Ever the performer, Charles Taylor now has an international audience.  The defense has listed 249 witnesses, and Taylor himself has made it clear that he is not only addressing the court, but all of Africa.  He now has the attention of the whole world.

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