Charles Taylor — The Former Liberian President Found Guilty Of Several War Crimes
Patrick ROBERT/Sygma via Getty ImagesCharles Taylor, leader of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), who revolted against President Samuel Doe and plunged the country into civil war.
Charles Taylor spent most of his life either on the front lines or on the run.
Born in 1948 in Arthington, Liberia, Taylor later moved to the United States in 1972 to study economics at Bentley College in Massachusettes. When he returned to Liberia, it was a very different country from the one he left.
According to CNN, Taylor returned to his home country shortly after Samuel Doe’s bloody coup that ousted the government that had been in place since 1847.
Taylor joined Doe’s administration in 1980, but only three years later, he once again traveled to America after Doe accused him of corruption and stealing over $900,000 from the Liberian government.
A year later, Taylor was arrested in Boston, held in prison while the court awaited extradition orders from the Liberian government.
They didn’t hold him for long, however, because Taylor eventually escaped from jail in 1985, fled to Mexico, and then received asylum in Libya from Muammar Qaddafi. There, Taylor formed the milita group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).
PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty ImagesCharles Taylor speaking with NFPL troops the same week he overthrew the regime of former Liberian president, Samuel Doe.
Per HISTORY, Taylor and the NPFL returned to Liberia in 1989, overthrowing Doe’s regime and plunging the country into a bloody, 14-year civil war that left 200,000 dead and over half the country’s population as refugees.
He was elected as Liberia’s president in 1997 after a peace deal was made to end the civil war, but Taylor’s history of corruption and poor choice of allies continued well into his reign.
While President of Liberia, Taylor continued to meddle in another civil war in Sierra Leone, selling guns to, and arranging attacks for, rebel groups in exchange for blood diamonds.
ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP via Getty ImagesCharles Taylor speaking with Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria during a symbolic bonfire to burn roughly 1,500 weapons in Monrovia, two years after the end of the conflict in Liberia.
The rebels he was aiding, though, were known to amputate their victims’ limbs, rape women, enslave those who survived their attacks, and force young boys to fight in child armies.
In the end, another 50,000 people in Sierra Leone were killed, and thousands more were mutilated.
Taylor denied the accusations levied against him, but during his trial in 2006, 115 witnesses including rape victims and people who had been mutilated testified against him.
It was also revealed through intercepted radio and telephone conversations that Taylor had been in direct contact with the rebels.
He is now serving out a 50-year sentence in the United Kingdom.
