Taylor a Test Case for International Justice in Africa

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ED GORDON, host:

The bazaar and brutal story of former Liberian President Charles Taylor may finally be coming to an end. Yesterday, Taylor made his first public statement since he was arrested last week in Nigeria after attempting to flee to Cameroon.

Mr. CHARLES TAYLOR (Former President of Liberia): Most definitely, Your Honor. I did not and could not have committed these acts against the sister Republic of Sierra Leone. I think that this is an attempt to continue to divide and rule the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone, and so most definitely I'm not guilty.

GORDON: Today, Taylor sits in a detention center in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Mr. Taylor is charged with supporting Sierra Leone rebels from 1991 to 2002, a period in which over a million people were maimed and mutilated. But as NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton explains, he had a long history of manipulation and crime even before he came to power.

OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON reporting:

Charles Taylor is really a showman. He has been an economic student in the United States; disappeared from a correctional center in Boston, Massachusetts, he says with the help of, if not the CIA, definitely the Americans. Then Taylor pops up again back in Liberia at the end of 1989, this time as a rebel leader who launched the country's first civil war. So he really has had a very varied history.

GORDON: We'll look at what lies ahead for Charles Taylor. NPR's Farai Chideya spoke with David Crane. Mr. Crane is a former prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal in West Africa. Crane says that Charles Taylor's claims of innocence are just he beginning of his defense.

Mr. DAVID CRANE (Former Prosecutor, International War Crimes Tribunal, West Africa): He is asserting his rights as an indicted war criminal. Certainly, the burden is on the prosecution to prove this horrific indictment against him beyond a reasonable doubt. And at the International level just like at the domestic level here in the U.S. he's innocent until proven guilty. And certainly that's what he was doing today under the rules of procedure and evidence that the court has. And what we saw today was the beginning of the pretrial phase of his war crimes trial.

QUIST-ARCTON: The United States has not always been a fan of these international criminal courts. I'm sure there are a lot of countries that are not fans of the international criminal courts. What are the objections by specific nations or specific leaders to how they operate?

Mr. CRANE: The concerns of some states are, is that when you have an international tribunal, you give up a little bit of your sovereignty in order for justice to be done. Sierra Leone is a good example. They invited this tribunal to come in, which they did, and they gave up a little bit of their sovereignty for us to go in and investigate and prosecute those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So yeah, there is a little bit of discomfort. I know that the Bush administration, in particularly, is very uncomfortable about an international prosecutor having the power appropriately to indict heads of state, and they're quite nervous about that, and really, it's sine qua non of their opposition to the international criminal court.

CHIDEYA: What are the parallels between what happened in Sierra Leone and the genocide in Rwanda?

Mr. CRANE: Well, in some ways, it's unparalleled because, again, in Rwanda, it was a genocide, a very specific way to wipe out a particular culture and people. In Sierra Leone, it was much more sinister. It was created, started by a joint criminal enterprise, Moammar Gaddafi, in conjunction with Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso and, of course, Charles Taylor. Many of these individuals, graduates of the terrorism camps of Moammar Gaddafi, and the plan was to take over West Africa and put in surrogates of Moammar Gaddafi so that he could have firm control of this natural resource-rich area of the world.

CHIDEYA: Taylor supporters in Sierra Leone and even in Liberia say that he will never get a fair trial. How do you respond to that?

Mr. CRANE: He will definitely get a fair trial. You know, we're here not to just to prosecute and put them in jail but to show the people of West Africa and Africa that the law is fair, that no one is above the law and that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun. They're going to have to live with the result, and regardless of what they feel about the result, as long as they feel it's fair, then they can, and so it's very important that he be defended rigorously, that the prosecution be put through its paces, but I can assure you, at the end of the day, Charles Taylor will never see the light of a free day again.

CHIDEYA: How does this trial affect the ability of African citizens to judge their leaders effectively? And how does it affect the ability of leaders to act with impunity?

Mr. CRANE: Well, you know, it's important that the standard now has been set. For the first time in history, an African leader has been indicted and pled not guilty and arraigned on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He's only the second head of state in history, behind Slobodan Milosevic, to do so. The bar has been set. What has now been told to African leaders and to the people of Africa is that you can't do this to your people, that there is international norms. It's also a great signal to the people of Africa because it tells them that they matter, that their lives are important and that they're to be protected by their governments, not abused by their governments. And so this is the beginning of the beginning of the end of impunity in Africa by seeing this indicted war criminal sitting before the bar of justice to answer to these horrific, horrific crimes that he was individually, criminally responsible for, resulting in the murder, rape, maiming and mutilation of over 1.2 million human beings.

CHIDEYA: David Crane is a distinguished visiting professor of law at Syracuse University and a former prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal for West Africa, also called the special court for Sierra Leone. Thank you, Mr. Crane.

Mr. CRANE: It's been my pleasure talking to you.

ED GORDON, host:

That was NPR's Farai Chideya.

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