Taylor team targets war court

2004-03-15 08:58

Jonathan Paye-Layleh

Monrovia - Lawyers representing former Liberian president Charles Taylor said on Sunday they had filed a suit against a war crimes court which scoured the ex-leader's home for evidence he aided rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone's brutal civil war.

Taylor, living in exile in Nigeria, has been indicted by a UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone on 17 counts of supporting, directing and running guns and gems with that country's rebels.

War crimes investigators, escorted by UN peacekeepers, searched several of Taylor's residences in Monrovia on March 5 with the approval of Liberia's justice ministry.

Lawyer Richard Flomo said the court "lacks territorial jurisdiction over Liberia" and the searches were therefore illegal.

The suit was filed at a high court in Monrovia on Friday against Liberia's justice ministry and Alan White, chief of investigations for the Sierra Leonean court in Freetown.

Taylor's lawyers have argued that the war crimes tribunal doesn't have jurisdiction to charge Taylor since he was a head of state at the time of his alleged crimes.

Sierra Leone's rebels were notorious for hacking off the limbs of victims during that country's 1991-2002 civil war. Rebel leader Foday Sankoh died last year in the court's custody before he could be tried.

Taylor was a warlord when he launched a rebellion in 1989 that threw the West African country into turmoil until several factions agreed a peace deal in 1996. A year later, Taylor was elected president, but rebels took up arms against him in 1999, driving him out of Monrovia last year.

Nigeria, a regional diplomatic and military heavyweight which helped arrange a peace deal which led to Taylor's resignation, says it won't be pressured into handing Taylor to the war-crimes tribunal.

Nigeria says it acted in the interests of West African stability and must honour its pledges to Taylor in granting him exile.

- SAPA