Charles Taylor (Liberian politician)

• Born: January 28, 1948
• Place of Birth: Arthington, Liberia

LIBERIAN DICTATOR (1997–2003)

CAUSE OF NOTORIETY: Taylor’s soldiers perpetrated grave atrocities, and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement that Taylor fostered in neighboring Sierra Leone surpassed his own record of crimes against humanity.

ACTIVE: December, 1989–August 11, 2003

Early Life

Born of a mother of Gola ancestry and an Americo-Liberian father, Charles Taylor studied in Liberia before proceeding to the United States, where he obtained a BA in economics from Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1977.

Military and Political Career

Taylor returned to Liberia shortly before noncommissioned officers of indigenous Liberian origins overthrew the Americo-Liberian government of William R. Tolbert Jr. in a bloody coup d’état in April 1980. Taylor was appointed head of the Government Services Agency, which handled state procurements. However, he soon fell out with Samuel Doe, head of the military junta, who accused Taylor of embezzling $900,000. Taylor fled to the United States, where he was held in the Plymouth County House of Corrections in Massachusetts. He escaped under mysterious circumstances on September 15, 1985. It is strongly suspected that Taylor’s escape was part of a plot to bolster opposition to Doe, whose excesses had alienated his friends in Washington.

Taylor subsequently underwent military training in Libya and reemerged in December 1989, at the head of insurgents from Ivory Coast. The ensuing protracted war engulfed Liberia and its neighbors, especially Guinea and Sierra Leone. Taylor drew support from Libya, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso and from the Gio and Mano, who had borne the brunt of Doe’s persecution and misrule. Taylor founded a group known as the National Patriotic Liberation Front (NPFL), aimed at toppling Doe. His army, which included boy and girl soldiers whose parents had been murdered by Taylor’s marauding soldiers, as well as mercenaries mainly from Burkina Faso, swept through large swathes of the Liberian hinterland, confining President Doe to Monrovia, the capital city, by 1990.

Meanwhile, several important events took place in 1990 and 1991. First, the escalation of the Liberian conflict prompted other countries in West Africa to organize an interventionist force, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, better known by its acronym of ECOMOG. It was to be a key, but controversial, actor in the unfolding tragedy in Liberia. Second, one of Taylor’s lieutenants, Prince Yormie Johnson, had broken away to form the Independent National Patriotic Liberation Front (INPLF), which established itself in Monrovia. A third major development was the abduction of President Doe by Johnson and his men at the ECOMOG headquarters in Monrovia. Doe was tortured to death on September 9, 1990.

Taylor escalated the Liberian conflict into a regional conflagration by instigating the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone (RUF) to launch an insurgency against the Sierra Leonean government in 1991. The RUF, under Foday Sankoh and Samuel Bockarie, gained global infamy for cutting off the limbs of their defenseless victims, especially women and children. Taylor and the RUF plundered the mineral resources of Sierra Leone, especially diamonds. Taylor became a major conduit for the “blood diamonds” exported by the RUF to pay for armaments and other supplies.

Meanwhile, the Liberian conflict persisted, with Taylor becoming the most successful Liberian warlord. With Doe out of the way and all but Monrovia in his grip, he was thwarted from seizing power only by the ECOMOG forces stationed in the capital. The impasse was broken by a peace deal in 1995 that installed an interim government. The stage was set for the election of July 1997, which Taylor won—essentially because the war-weary Liberians feared that he could renew hostilities if he lost the election. He secured 75 percent of the votes cast and assumed office on August 2, 1997.

Like Doe before him, Taylor was a ruthless and corrupt dictator who soon alienated important segments of the society. In 1999, elements opposed to Taylor under the banner of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) invaded northern Liberia from the neighboring country of Guinea. While LURD was entrenching itself in the north, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) invaded the country from Ivory Coast to the southeast.

Legal Action and Outcome

In 2001, the United Nations (UN) placed an arms and travel ban on the Taylor government. By June 2003, the insurgents had seized two-thirds of the country, giving Taylor a taste of his own medicine. In that month, a UN tribunal ordered Taylor’s arrest in connection with the use of child soldiers and large-scale atrocities in Sierra Leone. Intense pressure from the international community ensured Taylor’s resignation and exile on August 11, 2003. By early 2006, he remained in exile in Calabar, an eastern Nigerian city, at the insistence of the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

After Taylor attempted to leave Nigeria and cross into Chad in March 2006, he was taken into custody by Nigerian border patrols and sent back to Liberia. From there, the UN orchestrated his transportation to Sierra Leone to face a tribunal. Taylor pled not guilty to the eleven charges leveled against him, and he was taken to The Hague in the Netherlands for trial, in part to minimize the risk of renewed unrest in Sierra Leone. The trial, judged by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, officially began in June 2007 but was delayed for several months when Taylor boycotted the court, questioning its legitimacy, and demanded a stronger legal team. Following the beginning of the trial in earnest in 2008, several witnesses testified to gruesome experiences involving rape, dismemberment, and other brutal acts at the hands of rebel leaders; Taylor, on the other hand, argued that the charges against him were founded on misinformation. Though the prosecution had rested its case in 2009, it was allowed to reopen its case in 2010 to admit new testimony from model Naomi Campbell regarding questionable diamonds she had allegedly received from Taylor.

Once the trial came to an end in 2011, the tribunal spent thirteen months in deliberation before convicting Taylor of supplying and supporting rebel groups in Sierra Leone that committed crimes against humanity, as well as for exploiting Sierra Leone's diamond deposits to aid in purchasing arms for rebel fighters. On May 30, 2012, he was formally sentenced to fifty years in prison. His legal team's attempt to appeal the ruling in 2013 was denied, and he was sent to the United Kingdom (UK) to serve out his prison sentence. In 2015, his request to serve the remainder of his sentence in prison in Rwanda was also denied. He requested transfer to a prison outside of the UK in 2020 during the global COVID-19 pandemic, but his request was denied. In 2021, he sought retirement and pension benefits he said he was owed since his 2003 resignation. The Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice ruled he was not entitled to the benefits in June 2023.

Impact

Taylor employed child soldiers and terror, caused proliferation of small arms in the West African subregion, escalated regional conflict through the RUF in Sierra Leone, and plundered Liberian and Sierra Leonean diamonds. He caused the deaths of more than two hundred thousand persons, the displacement and exile of a million others, and the destabilization of neighboring states and governments. Reputed as the most criminal West African ruler of all time, Taylor was indicted and convicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity (including cannibalism), embezzlement of state funds, and human rights violations.

Bibliography

Boisbouvier, Christophe. "Liberia: 15 Years Later, We Remember the Long Hunt for Charles Taylor." The Africa Report, 29 Mar. 2021, www.theafricareport.com/73802/liberia-15-years-later-we-remember-the-long-hunt-for-charles-taylor/. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

"Charles Taylor Fast Facts." CNN, 10 Jan. 2024, www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/world/africa/charles-taylor-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

Ellis, Stephen. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. New York UP, 1999.

Sawyer, Amos. Beyond Plunder: Toward Democratic Governance in Liberia. Lynne Rienner, 2005.

Simons, Marlise, and J. David Goodman. "Ex-Liberian Leader Gets 50 Years for War Crimes." The New York Times, 30 May 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/world/africa/charles-taylor-sentenced-to-50-years-for-war-crimes.html. Accessed 26 Oct. 2017.

Yoder, John C. Popular Political Culture, Civil Society, and State Failure in Liberia. Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.