Charles Taylor's Trial for Murder, Rape and Slavery Begins in Hague ; WORLD

Jun 04, 02:03 AM

Current Headlines: By Alex Duval Smith

The former child soldiers of Sierra Leone will be riv-etted to their radios this morning as the war crimes trial begins in The Hague of one of the most-feared men in Africa, the former Liberian president Charles Taylor.

Mr Taylor faces 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly backing the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group that killed, maimed and raped thousands of Sierra Leoneans during a war that lasted 11 years and ended in 2002 after British military intervention.

The RUF was notorious for its mass recruitment of child soldiers who were trained to cut off their victims' limbs with machetes. Mr Taylor is being tried in The Hague by the Special Court for Sierra Leone because both the Liberian and Sierra Leonean governments fear that a court case in west Africa might create instability by rousing Mr Taylor's supporters, many of whom are unruly former child soldiers.

But the case, which will be relayed live by satellite to a Freetown courtroom, has inspired less passion in Sierra Leone than had been expected. Those who were directly involved in the 11-year war - whether as combatants or civilian victims - are showing a keen interest. For the vast majority of the former British colony's five million people, the trial is a non-event.

"The special court's work has not succeeded in touching the lives of the majority of Sierra Leoneans," said Morlay Kamara of the good- governance watchdog the Network Movement for Justice and Development. "To move forward, people want to see concrete initiatives that change their lives. There is still no clean water, still no electricity. Once again foreigners are making money from diamonds. The special court is seen as expensive, full of expats."

Mr Taylor is the most high-profile of the indicted alleged war criminals at the special court, which is largely European Union- funded and sits behind double concrete walls on a hill above Freetown. The other eight prisoners - whose trials are deemed less likely to arouse passions in the sub-region - are being tried in the Sierra Leonean capital.

Charles Ghankay ("the Warrior") Taylor was born around 1948 in Arthington, near the Liberian capital Monrovia. Educated in the United States, he was a civil servant in Liberia in the 1970s where he gained the nickname "superglue" because money stuck to his hands. In 1983 President Samuel Doe sacked him for an alleged theft of $900,000. He fled to the US, was imprisoned and escaped from jail there.

When he returned to Liberia in 1989 it was to launch a savage war - first in his own country, and later in neighbouring diamond-rich Sierra Leone. There, his ally was Foday Sankoh, leader of the RUF, a movement initially launched to defend the impoverished rural masses.

At the trial which opens today in The Hague, and will be adjourned until 25 June to give the defence more time to prepare its case, the special court will hear that Sankoh was enlisted by Mr Taylor to provide diamonds in return for arms.

Sankoh, who died in special court custody in 2003, was inspired by Mr Taylor's tactics in the Liberian war of rape and savage killing. So brutal was the warfare that when Mr Taylor organised an election in 1997 to have himself elected president, he used the slogan: "I killed your ma, I killed your pa, you will vote for me." Sankoh added an extra layer of brutality, recruiting children to the RUF ranks and deploying them to kill their families or cut off their limbs. Among the victims was El Hadj Lamin Jusu Jarka, now the 51- year-old chairman of the country's amputees' association. He lost both hands on 6 January 1999 when the RUF descended on Freetown.

He believes the truth commission approach - confession without retribution - might have been more constructive than a special court. "We had a truth commission but it was limited in scope because of the special court's existence. Nevertheless it really got people talking. The trouble is the government has just ignored its findings."

If Mr Taylor is found guilty, Britain has offered to provide his jail. The trial is expected to last 18 months. The prosecution alone is calling 169 witnesses, many of whom will be flown to the Netherlands. Last week, special court representatives travelled to Brussels to call for a further [pound]45m in funding.

Many Sierra Leoneans say donor money - both the special court's funding and the country's [pound]140m annual foreign aid income - is now being either misspent or squandered. Out of the Department for International Development's [pound]40m annual grant, [pound]15m goes straight into the government's coffers. Judging from the continuing lack of infrastructure, very little of that money is devolved to grassroots projects.

The charge sheet

1. Acts of terrorism

2. Murder

3. Rape

4. Sexual slavery and any other form of sexual violence

5. Outrages upon personal dignity

6. Violence to life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons, in particular cruel treatment (two counts)

7. Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups

8. Enslavement

9. Pillage

10. Other inhumane acts

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