Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor, born in 1948, was the President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003.  He was a prominent warlord during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s and was elected president following that conflict.  In 1999 a rebellion against Taylor began in northern Liberia, led by a group called the Liberian Union for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).  By early 2003 LURD and a second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), controlled two thirds of the country. Taylor subsequently went into exile and was eventually arrested by security forces while trying to cross the border into Cameroon from Nigeria on March 29, 2006.

On March 7, 2003 the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) indicted Taylor with charges of crimes against humanity for his alleged involvement in the Sierra Leone civil war. Taylor is currently undergoing trial in The Hague for the 650-count indictment. The trial began in June 2007, but has since been delayed due to a change in defense counsel for Mr. Taylor.  The trial is scheduled to resume in January 2008. 

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Charles Taylor – preacher, warlord and president - 4 June 2007

Jurist – Charles Taylor

Blog covering Charles Taylor trial