LIBERIA:The trial of the first African leader to be prosecuted for international war crimes finally got under way yesterday when Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, entered the dock at a special tribunal in The Hague after months of wrangling and boycotts.
In what is being seen as a key test for the efficacy of international justice, the prosecution launched its lengthy attempt to put the 59-year-old former warlord and head of state behind bars, probably in Britain, for alleged war crimes in Sierra Leone.
Taylor, previously convicted of embezzlement in the US, is pleading innocent to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court has been set up to deal with the atrocities perpetrated during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war, which was ended by British military intervention - ordered by Tony Blair - in 2002.
Taylor, accused of being deeply complicit in the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone to profit from the wrecked country's diamond trade, is alleged to have encouraged mass murder, the sexual enslavement of girls, mass rape, the recruitment of child armies, and the systematic amputation of limbs.
Human Rights Watch, which has long lobbied for an end to the impunity enjoyed by dictators and warlords in leading political positions, described the start of the case as a huge moment. "A former head of state is being tried for these most serious crimes," said Elise Keppler, a lawyer with the pressure group's international justice programme.
Taylor, who was president of Liberia for six years until 2003, was indicted the same year and arrested while attempting to flee Nigeria in 2006.
Before winning power in Liberia, he spent 14 years engaged in vicious and divisive conflict in his own country and then as Liberian leader supported the rebel army of the late Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone, allegedly supplying weapons to the insurgents in return for access to the lucrative diamond mines of Sierra Leone.
Taylor is alleged to have operated in cahoots with some of the world's most notorious arms traders, such as Viktor Bout or Leonid Minin, traffickers from the former Soviet Union enjoying extensive links with former KGB mafias.
The prosecution launched its case with testimony from Ian Smillie, a Canadian expert on the "blood diamonds" rackets. But it suffered a setback when the judges supported Taylor's defence objections that Smillie was not qualified to testify about atrocities allegedly linked to Taylor.
The trial, which opened last June, is being held in The Hague because of fear that it could destabilise Liberia.