Former Liberian president Charles Taylor told a war crimes court Wednesday he was "released" from a US prison in 1985 before returning home for the "revolution" that unseated his predecessor Samuel Doe.

"I am calling it my release because I didn't break out," he told the Special Court for Sierra Leone of the episode, widely described as a prison  break but alleged by at least one former ally to have been orchestrated by the US government.

"I did not pay any money, I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding afterwards," Taylor testified in The Hague without saying who helped him.

Prince Johnson, a former warlord first allied and then opposed to Taylor, told a Liberian truth commission last year that the US released the strongman from jail to engineer Doe's overthrow.

Taylor was imprisoned in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1985 pending an application for his extradition to face graft charges in Liberia.

He told the court he was fetched from the prison's maximum security section one night by a guard, who took him to the minimum security wing where two other  inmates were waiting.

"We got to the window, these guys took a sheet and we tied it to the bars.  I was taken out," Taylor testified. "There was a car waiting outside" which took him to New York.

In the following weeks, he moved around freely in the United States and Mexico and was never in hiding, claimed Taylor.

"My name was on my passport. No-one asked me any questions."

Taylor said he eventually made his way to Libya where a group led by him  underwent military training with the aim of invading Liberia and unseating  Doe.

Taylor, 61, on Tuesday took the witness stand for the first time since his  trial started in January 2008, describing charges of war crimes and crimes  against humanity against him as "lies".

He faces 11 charges for murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers,  enslavement and pillaging stemming from the brutal 1991-2001 civil war in  neighbouring Sierra Leone.