For the first time since the Nuremberg trials, a former head of state has been convicted by an international war crimes tribunal, as Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment by judges at The Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague.
Last month Taylor, described as a “warlord-turned-president”, was found guilty of 11 counts of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, for supporting rebels in return for conflict diamonds, during the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
He was convicted for several offences, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, recruiting child soldiers, enforced amputation and pillaging.
While prosecutors demanded an 80-year-sentence, the judges had concluded that this was excessive as Taylor was not convicted for directly carrying out war crimes but for “aiding and abetting” them.
Judge Richard Lussick described Taylor’s crimes as being of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality” and the court said of Taylor that he was to blame for “some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history”.
Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, from New York-based Human Rights Watch, was one of the activists welcoming the lengthy jail term, which is in effect a life sentence.
"It is really significant that Taylor's status as a former head of state was taken as an aggravating factor as far as his sentence was concerned.
"That is a very important precedent and I hope that Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir take note."
Korto Williams, director of ActionAid Liberia, said:
"Not only is this verdict an opportunity for Sierra Leone and Liberia to move forward, it also signals the international community's clear intent that any leader who misuses their power and carries out state-sanctioned violence will be held responsible for their crimes and will be punished."
The former president was arrested and sent to the Netherlands in 2006 having fled into exile in Nigeria after being indicted by the court in 2003.
Taylor denied the charges of encouraging human rights abuses in Sierra Leone, insisting he "pushed the peace process hard" and had been trying to stabilise the region.
Over 50,000 people died during the protracted civil war in Sierra Leone.
