Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor's career from rebel leader to Liberian president, diamond dealer and despotic warlord is predictably filled with many mysteries. But at the end of it all, Taylor is on trial for 650 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Taylor served as President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. He is alleged to have been one of Africa's most prominent warlords during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s. He was elected president at the end of the conflict. He was later forced into exile, and is currently being held in the United Nations Detention Unit on the premises of the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden, in The Hague. He is on trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Mystery surrounds Taylor's life since his escape from a prison in Massachusetts USA where he was being held on embezzlement charges. He was arrested on 24 May 1984, by two US Deputy Marshals in Somerville, on a warrant for extradition to face charges of embezzling $922,000 of Liberian government funds. On 15 September 1985, Taylor and four other inmates escaped from the jail by sawing through a bar covering a window in an unused laundry room. After dropping 12 feet to the ground by means of a knotted sheet, the five inmates climbed a fence and made their getaway in a waiting car.
Taylor found his way back to Africa where he is alleged to have undergone guerrilla training and used his new found knowledge to begin a civil war in Liberia.
However, Prince Johnson, a Liberian senator and disgruntled associate of Taylor, claimed before the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on 27 August 2008 that the United States released Taylor from jail in 1985 to engineer the overthrow of President Samuel Doe of Liberia.
In December 1989, Taylor launched a Libyan-funded armed uprising from Côte d'Ivoire into Liberia to overthrow its government. His forces, known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), soon controlled most of the country. Samuel Doe was overthrown and tortured to death the following year by Prince Johnson. Doe's fall led to the political fragmentation of the country into violent factionalism. In mid-1990, Johnson's supporters split from Taylor's group and captured Monrovia.
The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources: iron ore, diamond, timber and rubber.
After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia's president on 2 August 1997. The elections were overseen by the United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNOMIL.
Peace never returned to the country after his presidency. Numerous allegations have been leveled at Taylor since he took office in 1997, including assisting rebel forces in Sierra Leone with weapon sales in exchange for diamonds, acts of atrocities against civilians that have left many thousands dead or mutilated, with unknown numbers of people abducted and tortured, and the conscription of child soldiers in the war in Sierra Leone.
Taylor has also been charged by the UN of being a gun-runner and diamond smuggler during his presidency.
But Taylor is claiming that he broke out of jail in Plymouth, Mass., helped by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Taylor said the plan was for him to join Liberian military leader, Thomas Quiwonkpa who was plotting a coup against Liberia's then President Samuel Doe. Taylor has said he is “100 percent positive” that the CIA was providing the weapons for the plot.
Taylor has now publicly appeared in all white robes and begged God for forgiveness and has adopted Judaism, according to “one” of his wives. Victoria Taylor told the BBC World Service that Taylor “is now a Jew. He's practicing Judaism.”
The whole story of Charles Taylor's rise and fall resembles hallucinogenic drugs induced theme for a British TV series called The Prisoner. The series follows a spy who abruptly resigns his job, and then wakes to finds himself held captive in an isolated mysterious seaside "village". The Village is secured by numerous monitoring systems and security, including a mysterious device called Rover that captures those that attempt escape. The agent is told by the Village authority that they are seeking "information" as to why he resigned.
Nobody seems to be asking any questions about the “respectful” diamond companies that aided Taylor throughout, via purchases of the gems looted from Sierra Leon and Liberia.
