Charles Taylor's Arrest "Great Moment" for International Justice
10 April 2006
Former prosecutor for U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone speaks out
By Charles W. Corey
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The recent arrest of former Liberian President Charles Taylor marks a "great moment for international criminal justice and the victims who suffered so tragically" under his rule, says David Crane, the former prosecutor for the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Speaking at an April 7 session at the United States Institute of Peace entitled "Charles Taylor on Trial," Crane said now that Taylor has been arrested, the rest of the story is going to follow the clearly laid out rules of criminal procedure and evidence. (See related article.)
"It's routine," he said. "We have an indictee. He is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has been arraigned. He has pleaded not guilty. … The decision now is what to do with him."
The original plan, Crane said, was to move Taylor to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands -- to get him out of West Africa and "let the dust settle."
"Over time, all of these tyrants, these warlords, these thugs -- their influence tends to wane. We have seen this … from [former German Third Reich General Hermann] Goering to [former Serbian dictator] Slobodan Milosevic and [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein … .
"So that was the original thinking … ," Crane told his audience. "The thinking is to go ahead and try the case at the Hague.
"That can be done," he explained. "Article Four of the statute allows for the Special Court to prosecute anyone who bears the greatest responsibility -- pretty much anywhere in the world, wherever it makes sense."
"When you are sitting there trying these guys and you have these people led in missing various body parts and you see one of them point their stump at the accused and say, 'You did this to me' because their hand is missing -- and then walk out proudly with their head held high …, ladies and gentlemen, … that is justice," Crane said.
TAYLOR SUPPORTED REBELS, CONDONED BRUTALITY
Taylor was elected president of Liberia in 1997 with 75.3 percent of the popular vote. During his presidency, he continued to battle insurgents who opposed his rule and reportedly began selling arms and other supplies to rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Taylor reportedly traded weapons for diamonds. Meanwhile, the rebels he purportedly aided continued their war against Sierra Leone's government, conducting brutal sweeps through civilian areas, chopping off the arms, legs and noses of thousands of suspected government supporters, including women and children. On June 4, 2003, Taylor was indicted for war crimes by the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone.
After Liberia descended into civil war in the early 1990s, widespread fighting began in neighboring Sierra Leone as well, led by rebels who reportedly crossed into the country from Liberia. The fighting grew more brutal over time, with roving bands of rebels often hacking the limbs of civilians in the countryside.
A 1996 peace accord failed to stop the fighting, and war raged in Sierra Leone until troops from the United Nations, Britain and the West African nation of Guinea succeeded in disarming the combatants in January 2002.
SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE
Crane said that international criminal justice can be delivered efficiently and effectively in the Special Court for Sierra Leone within a politically acceptable time frame. The court is a joint effort between the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations.
The former prosecutor called the Special Court for Sierra Leone the world's first "hybrid international war crimes tribunal with a workable mandate." That, he stressed, is the key to the "apparent success" of the tribunal's mandate, to prosecute those with the "greatest responsibility" for committing war crimes.
That means "going … after those who started this, aided it, abetted it, continued it and created the conditions by which other individuals were able to murder, rape, maim, mutilate, pillage, plunder, slave, etc.," he said.
Crane was appointed special prosecutor in April 2002 and said he expects the court to complete its work in 2007.
Currently, there are three joint criminal trials in Freetown, Sierra Leone, he said, against the leadership of the Civil Defense Force, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council.
With regard to Taylor, Crane said, "Our plan was to roll him up with the joint criminal indictment with the RUF, but that did not take place."
Certainly, he said, much of the same evidence gathered in the RUF trial can be used against Taylor.
Crane called Taylor the "centerpoint of a 10-year geopolitical plan" that Libya's Muammar al-Qadhafi started in the late 1980s to recruit individuals to move south, foment rebellion and eventually take over their countries and become "surrogates forLibyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi so he could do whatever he wanted to do with West Africa."
"We have clear evidence of this," Crane said. Those recruited by al-Qadhafi included RUF rebel leader Foday Sankoh; Blaise Campaore, the current president of Burkina Faso; and diamond merchant Ibrahim Bah, he added.
The result of this joint criminal exercise "was the murder, rape, maiming and mutilation of 500,000 people in Sierra Leone and about 600,000 in Liberia," Crane charged.
JUSTICE FOR LIBERIANS
Crane said a hybrid international war crimes tribunal should be considered for Liberia. "We cannot walk away from 600,000 human beings. The ultimate atrocity in my mind is that we don't do something and that these people go quietly into the night and that there is no record of their horrible deaths."
For information on U.S. policy in the region, see Africa.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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