For the last two months, former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been testifying in his own defence before the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). But despite an initial flurry of coverage, the public gallery and pressroom have been virtually empty for most of that time. As the court heads for a three-week recess starting October 5th, the IJT takes a look at the defence strategy thus far.

By Thijs Bouwknegt

“How could I have been micromanaging a conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone as alleged when I, as newly elected President of the Republic of Liberia, had so much on my plate to deal with?”

That is what Charles Ghankay Taylor has been arguing before the SCSL where he is on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Taylor has been on the stand since July 14th and has dismissed all allegations that he fomented war in Sierra Leone.

During the 1990s, Taylor went from revolutionary leader to President of Liberia. Now he is on trial in The Hague. Not for crimes committed in his homeland, or for any crimes he is alleged to have personally carried out, but for allegedly arming and supporting Sierra Leonean rebels - specifically the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – during the country’s bloody civil war. RUF rebels sowed death and destruction for over a decade, hacking off limbs, raping women and pillaging diamond mines.

Prosecutors at the SCSL allege that Taylor bears the “greatest responsibility” for this carnage. They say they can prove that he fuelled Sierra Leone’s war, through gunrunning and drug smuggling and by providing the RUF with money and weapons in exchange for diamonds.

As the trial opened in January 2008, prosecutors used witness testimony to show that Taylor and RUF leader Foday Sankoh established a relationship in Libya in the late 1980s, and designed a common plan to support each other’s efforts to capture political power in their home countries.

The prosecution claims that this bond lasted throughout the 1990s, and when Taylor became president in 1997, he continued to provide support for the RUF and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council military junta - even as these groups were committing atrocities in Sierra Leone.

Taylor admits to working with the RUF in the early 1990s but he says it was to fight rival Liberian rebels operating on the border of Sierra Leone.

“My relationship with Sankoh was a pure and simple security relationship to protect my border, that we would fight ULIMO [United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy] in Sierra Leone without having to fight them in Liberia.” But, he insists: “I say it to these judges: I, Charles Ghankay Taylor never talked to Sankoh after May of 1992 until I saw Sankoh in 1999 July in Lome. I did not.”

Former Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp, however, says Taylor’s involvement with the group ran much deeper. Rapp’s team sought to highlight the atrocities committed by Sierra Leonean rebels and establish a relationship between Taylor and those responsible on the ground. One of their key witnesses was a Gambian named Suwandi Camara who testified in February:

“[Gambian rebel leader Dr. Mani] and Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh, they made a meeting in Burkina that they will help him in his war. If he succeeds he will also help them in their war, because at that time we are very powerless,” Camara told the court.

A major obstacle for prosecutors is the fact that there’s no evidence that Taylor ever set foot in Sierra Leone. Indeed, Taylor’s lawyer has submitted photographs of Taylor travelling abroad in an effort to show that he couldn’t have been in Sierra Leone at the times alleged. The prosecution’s case has therefore focused on highlighting a long-standing relationship between Taylor and the RUF. Witnesses testified to regular communications taking place between Taylor and other RUF commanders such as Sam Bockarie and Issa Sesay.

Taylor’s version
Over the last two months, Taylor has been giving his own version of the events in Sierra Leone. Ever-eloquent, Taylor has taken the court through a concise history of 20th-century West African politics. And in his version, he is not a war criminal but a peacemaker who is now left carrying the can for the international community. He does not deny that crimes were committed in Sierra Leone, but argues that he would have had to be a “superman” to run his own war-torn country, while also planning and ordering the commission of crimes on the other side of the border.

“Mr Taylor, you are charged on an indictment containing 11 counts which alleges that you are everything from a terrorist to a rapist. What do you say about that?”, Lead Defence Counsel Courtenay Griffiths asked Taylor on his first day of testimony.

“Very, very, very unfortunate that the Prosecution, because of disinformation, misinformation, lies, rumours, would associate me with such titles or descriptions. I am none of those, have never been and will never be, whether they think so or not […] I resent that characterisation of me, it is false, it is malicious and I stop there.”

Vital to Taylor’s defence is the claim that he was acting at the behest of both the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the UN to broker peace between warring factions in Sierra Leone and negotiate with rebels to release abducted UN peacekeepers.

Taylor took on his peacekeeping role, he claims, as the head of the Committee of Five - a group set up by ECOWAS designed to bring calm to Sierra Leone. He says he was actively involved in efforts to get former President of Sierra Leone, Tejan Kabbah, and the RUF leadership to the negotiating table. The parties eventually signed a peace agreement in Lomé in June 1999.

“I spoke to the RUF many times by inviting the leadership to Liberia, by hosting them, everything with the knowledge and consent of the committee and ECOWAS. […] Of course the United Nations knew because most of my discussions in Sierra Leone I either spoke to Kofi Annan directly or through his special representative in Liberia, where I insisted on making sure that we had notice of communications. All of those are available to present to this Court,” Taylor said.

In trying to show that Taylor always acted transparently in his dealings with the RUF, Griffiths has been taking the court through scores of cables and memoranda between Taylor, the UN and ECOWAS. Rapp says that that’s just a smokescreen. “There are obviously certain situations in which the international community - because they knew he…had control of the rebels - would go to him. [But] Taylor wants to make it look as if he was only involved with them because of the peace process. We say he’s involved with the peace process to some extent to cover his tracks.”

Taylor, meanwhile, counters that he’s a victim of preconceptions. “They had made up their minds, it really did not matter whatever I did,” Taylor told the judges when responding to a 2000 UN Expert Panel Report which forms the core of the prosecution case.

The SCSL has not investigated crimes committed in Liberia. However, Liberia’s own Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called for an Extraordinary Criminal Court for Liberia to prosecute crimes committed during the back-to back civil wars. And Taylor is number one on their list of people to be brought to the dock in Monrovia.

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