S Leon: Taylor should be tried
2005-05-28 18:43
Freetown - Sierra Leone's government has for the first time said ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor should be tried for war crimes for allegedly backing Sierra Leone rebels in a vicious decade-long insurgency.
Sierra Leone's vice president Solomon Berewa said: "We have heard that while in exile in Nigeria, he is still straining his tentacles into Liberia."
Berewa said: "If he has done that, then he forfeits his rights of protection and is liable to be surrendered to the special court for protection."
The government had until Friday kept silent on the Freetown-based international war crimes tribunal's indictment of Taylor in keeping with its policy of doing nothing that might affect the court's independence.
The United Nations-backed tribunal was charged with trying those most responsible for abuses committed during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 battles for control of the country's rich diamond fields.
'Asylum, only way to end war'
Taylor remained the highest-profile suspect indicted by the court, whose officials had repeatedly called on Nigeria to surrender him for trial.
Berewa's comments were likely to increase pressure on Nigeria to hand over Taylor.
Nigeria, though, had maintained that giving him asylum in 2003 was the only way to end civil war in Liberia, and that it would harbour him as long as he refrained from interfering in his homeland's politics.
Officials at the war crimes court said they had evidence not only that Taylor had continued playing a role in Liberian politics, but also was behind a January attempt to assassinate Guinea President Lansana Conte, a longtime Taylor foe.
On Tuesday, war crime tribunal chief prosecutor David Crane said Taylor received money recently from an al-Qaeda operative and was trying to destabilise West Africa.
- AP