The Trial of Charles Taylor: A Preview

By Anthony Dworkin

The former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, goes on trial on Monday June 4 before a special session of the Sierra Leone Special Court sitting in The Hague in the Netherlands.  After the high-profile trials of Slobodan Milosevic before the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal and Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court, the idea that former political leaders should be held accountable for violations of international law is no longer a novelty--but Taylor is the first African leader to stand trial.  His case will be closely watched both because of its own intrinsic importance and because it seems to offer the greatest prospect so far of an effective and successful prosecution of a former head of state.

Taylor is a former guerrilla leader who led an insurgency against the Liberian strongman Samuel Doe during the 1990s.  He became president of Liberia in 1997 and retained power until 2003, when he resigned under international pressure in the face of an insurgency that threatened to produce massive bloodshed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.  By this point, Taylor had already been indicted by the war crimes tribunal in the neighbouring country of Sierra Leone, for allegedly financing and overseeing the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement in that country that was notorious for its mutilation of civilians.  After leaving Liberia, Taylor took refuge in Nigeria, but was handed over to the Sierra Leone Special Court last year after an appeal from Liberia’s new government.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor makes his first appearance at the Special Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone on April 3, 2006. His actual trial is being held in a special session of the court using the facilities of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, starting Monday June 3, 2007. (AP Photo/George Osodi, Pool)

The Sierra Leone tribunal is a so-called “hybrid” court, meaning that it combines international and domestic judges and prosecutors.  The court normally sits in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, but Taylor’s trial has been moved to The Hague because of concerns that holding it in West Africa could lead to instability.  Operating on limited resources, the Sierra Leone court is charged with prosecuting “those most responsible” for the atrocities that took place during the country’s civil war.

There is little doubt in the minds of most observers that Taylor is among those most responsible for the crimes committed in Sierra Leone.  But the prosecutors in his case face the challenge of proving his responsibility according to the demanding standards of criminal jurisprudence.  It is a recurrent feature of war crimes trials involving political leaders that the accused were not generally present at the scene of the crimes for which they are accused, and therefore they can only be convicted if there is persuasive evidence that demonstrates their authorisation or knowledge of the atrocities that were taking place.  In Charles Taylor’s case, the challenge is compounded by the fact that he was not in a direct position of authority over the rebel groups involved, but is accused of having supported and paid for their campaign.

In this way, Taylor’s trial will represent an important attempt to unmask the kind of economic relationships that underlie Africa’s so-called “resource wars,” campaigns of violence that aim in large part to control and exploit mineral resources like gold and diamonds that in turn are used to pay for military action.  In the words of Taylor’s indictment, “To obtain access to the mineral wealth of the Republic of Sierra Leone, in particular the diamond wealth of Sierra Leone, and to destabilize the State, the ACCUSED provided financial support, military training, personnel, arms, ammunition and other support and encouragement to the RUF...  in preparation for RUF armed action in the Republic of Sierra Leone, and during the subsequent armed conflict in Sierra Leone.” 

The Court’s Prosecutor, the American Stephen Rapp, has said he plans to call up to 139 witnesses, of whom 62 are predominantly “linkage” witnesses, whose evidence will address Taylor’s connection to the crimes in the indictment.  These witnesses will testify “to Taylor's control, to his orders, to his instigation, to his plans, to his provision of assistance of arms, training, safe refuge to the rebels, with full knowledge of the atrocities they were committing to the civilian population,” according to comments the prosecutor made recently to the Netherlands-based Foreign Press Association.  “At the end of the day,” Rapp said in another interview with Associated Press last month, “we think Taylor planned and knew exactly what was going on.”  Prosecutors will argue that rebels in Sierra Leone were in almost daily contact with Taylor’s presidential residence in Liberia, and that he provided the rebels with arms, ammunition and communications equipment in exchange for diamonds smuggled out of Sierra Leone.

Several of the witnesses in the case will be allowed to give evidence without their identities being publicly revealed, especially “insiders” once close to Taylor who are thought to be particularly likely to face reprisals as they may be regarded as traitors for testifying against him.

In charging Taylor with direct responsibility for atrocities in Sierra Leone, prosecutors are relying on a number of different roles that he may have played in the conflict.  Thus he is alleged to have directly ordered crimes, and to have aided and abetted them.  But the most important part of the indictment revolves around a doctrine in international criminal jurisprudence known as “joint criminal enterprise.”  To prove this, prosecutors must demonstrate that Taylor entered into a form of criminal conspiracy with rebel leaders in Sierra Leone -- that he made an intentional contribution to further the commission of crimes by this group, knowing of the intention of the group involved to commit the crime.  In other words, the case against Taylor may rest on whether prosecutors can show that the crimes carried out by rebel fighters in Sierra Leone were part of an agreement between Taylor and militia leaders, or a predictable consequence of it.

The place of atrocities in the Sierra Leone civil war, and Taylor’s connection to them, are directly spelled out in the indictment, which says that rebel groups including the RUF “shared a common plan, purpose or design (joint criminal enterprise) which was to take any actions necessary to gain and exercise political power and control over the territory of Sierra Leone, in particular the diamond mining areas. The natural resources of Sierra Leone, in particular the diamonds, were to be provided to persons outside Sierra Leone in return for assistance in carrying out the joint criminal enterprise.

“The joint criminal enterprise included gaining and exercising control over the population of Sierra Leone in order to prevent or minimize resistance to their geographic control, and to use members of the population to provide support to the members of the joint criminal enterprise. The crimes alleged in this Indictment…were either actions within the joint criminal enterprise or were a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the joint criminal enterprise.

“The ACCUSED participated in this joint criminal enterprise as part of his continuing efforts to gain access to the mineral wealth of Sierra Leone and to destabilize the Government of Sierra Leone.”

Taylor is charged with eleven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.  Since the war in Sierra Leone was a civil war, the war crimes for which he has been indicted are violations of the laws applicable in non-international armed conflict – Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the Second Additional Protocol, and customary international law.  Among the specific crimes he has been charged with are terrorizing the civilian population; murder; rape and sexual slavery; cruel treatment and inhumane acts; the use of child soldiers; and enslavement as a crime against humanity.  The enslavement charges represent the most significant attempt yet made to prosecute someone for this crime.

The essential challenge for the trial is to show that these crimes were a central part of the objectives that Taylor, the RUF leader Foday Sankoh, and others agreed on, rather than being incidental excesses committed by troops in the heat of battle.  In this way, the Taylor trial will be the most important attempt yet to penetrate to the heart of the economic relationships and interests that have driven so many of the recent brutal conflicts in Africa, and to use the methods of international criminal justice to hold responsible a political leader who subsidized and benefited from such a campaign of atrocity.

Opening statements in the trial will be delivered on May 4.  The trial will then adjourn to allow the defense team more timeto prepare, and the first witnesses will be heard on June 25.  The trial is expected to last 18 months in all. 

By keeping the trial within this limited timeframe, the Court's officers are aiming to avoid the drawn-out nature of the Milosevic trial.  At the same time, they hope by holding the trial outside of Sierra Leone to avoid the trial being compromised by political insecurity.  The biggest problem the trial faces is a financial one: the costs of moving Taylor's trial to The Hague are significant and the tribunal is already short of money.  The court needs to raise an additional $36 million this year for the Taylor trial and other ongoing trials, Stephen Rapp told reporters last week.

Related Chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know

Crimes Against Humanity
Genocide
Liberia
War Crimes, Categories of

Related Links:

Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Trial of Charles Taylor

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