Ex-Liberian president flees war crimes tribunal

Michelle Faul

ABUJA, Nigeria — Former Liberian President Charles Taylor disappeared from his Nigerian haven, days after his hosts agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal for the murder, rape and maiming of more than a half-million Africans, officials said Tuesday.

The announcement of Taylor’s disappearance came the day before Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo was to meet with President Bush at the White House.

That visit was supposed to occur on a high note after Obasanjo resolved two issues of concern to his U.S. allies — Monday’s release of kidnapped American oil workers and last week’s deal to hand over Africa’s most infamous warlord.

But Taylor vanished Monday night from his villa in the southern town of Calabar, the government said. A presidential spokeswoman said members of Taylor’s Nigerian security detail had been arrested.

The presidential statement offered no details on how Taylor’s disappearance was discovered or whether he was being hunted. Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that dozens of people who were living with Taylor in a walled government compound had left Monday and were flying to Lagos en route to an unknown destination.

Liberia’s information minister, Johnny McClain, said his government would not comment because it had not been formally informed of Taylor’s disappearance.

A Nigerian government statement said Obasanjo was creating a panel to investigate Taylor’s disappearance. The statement raised the possibility he might have been abducted but did not elaborate.

An international tribunal indictment says Taylor is criminally responsible for the devastation of Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone and for the murder, rape, maiming and mutilation of more than a half-million Sierra Leoneans. He allegedly backed Sierra Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips.

Separately, Taylor also is accused of harboring al-Qaeda suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans.

Last week, Nigeria’s government agreed reluctantly to surrender him to stand before a U.N. tribunal.

Obasanjo offered Taylor refuge under an agreement that helped end Liberia’s civil war in 2003.

Since then, though, the United States, the United Nations and others have called for Taylor to be handed over to an international war crimes tribunal.

Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But Saturday, after new Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over for trial, Obasanjo agreed.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States told Obasanjo it was Nigeria’s responsibility to “see that he is able to be conveyed and face justice.”

African leaders have been reluctant to see the continent’s former presidents or dictators brought to justice, apparently fearful they would be the next accused of human rights abuses or other crimes.

Since agreeing Saturday to hand Taylor over, Obasanjo had been under pressure to ensure Taylor was sent to the U.N. tribunal sitting in Sierra Leone.

Taylor escaped in 1985 from the Plymouth County Jail in Boston - cutting through bars with a hacksaw and climbing down a knotted sheet - to launch Liberia’s civil war. He was jailed there after fleeing to the United States when accused of embezzling $1 million as head of Liberia’s General Services Administration.

Taylor lived in the Boston area during the 1970s, earning an economics degree from Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., in 1977. He also pumped gas and worked in a plastics factory.

Taylor is believed to have considerable resources. U.N. investigators have said he and his allies continued to steal from Liberia’s treasury even from exile.

The U.N. Security Council had expressed concern Taylor was using “misappropriated funds” to undermine his homeland’s stability in the run-up to the elections Sirleaf won earlier this year, taking over from a transitional administration.

(Associated Press )