War crimes court hears Taylor appeal
2013-01-22 10:54
The Hague - Prosecutors and lawyers defending former
Liberian warlord Charles Taylor on Tuesday begin their appeals at Sierra
Leone's UN-backed special court against his 50-year prison sentence for
fuelling the west African nation's savage civil war.
Appeals judges are to listen to arguments both from
prosecutors demanding a heavier sentence and from the former strongman's
lawyers calling for his sentence to be quashed or reduced.
The hearing is to begin at 10:00 at the Special Court for
Sierre Leone's headquarters in the leafy suburb of Leidschendam outside The
Hague.
The case will be dominated by particularly complex legal
arguments - with both sides saying judges made mistakes in law in convicting
Taylor in April last year and sentencing him in May.
The UN-backed court's 50-year sentence against Taylor, 64,
for "some of the most heinous crimes in human history" was widely
welcomed around the world at the time.
Judges said he aided and abetted rebel forces fighting
against Freetown during Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war, known for its
mutilations, drugged child soldiers and sex slaves.
In return, trial judges found, Taylor was paid in
"blood diamonds" mined by slave labour in areas kept under the
countrol of ruthless Sierra Leonean rebels.
The historic sentence was the first handed down against a
former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at
Nuremberg in 1946.
Prosecutors, who declined to comment ahead of the hearing,
are to argue that trial judges made a mistake by only convicting Taylor of
aiding and abetting the notorious Revolutionary United Front and other rebel
groups.
Miscarriage of justice
In one of four grounds of appeal, they said the court should
have convicted Taylor for actively issuing orders to the RUF and its ally, the
Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).
"The appropriate sentence should have been 80 years in
order to reflect the totality of his overall conduct and culpability,"
prosecutors insisted.
Taylor's defence has filed 42 grounds of appeal, calling the
trial chamber's decision a "miscarriage of justice", and asked
appeals judges to reverse the conviction and quash the sentence.
"The colossal judgement, over 2 500 pages in length, is
plagued throughout by internal inconsistencies, misstatements of evidence and
conflicting findings," Taylor's lawyer Morris Anyah said in court papers.
Taylor, said Anyah, "was never in Sierra Leone when
these crimes were committed" and furthermore he was so "engulfed at
the time in many other domestic issues that it was not possible for him to be
leading rebels in other countries to fight wars".
Appeals judges are expected to have a decision by September,
SCSL spokesperson Solomon Moriba said, with the ex-Liberian president remaining
behind bars at the UN's detention unit in The Hague until appeals proceedings
are finalised.
If his appeal fails, Taylor will serve his sentence in a
British jail.
