War criminal Charles Taylor to serve 50-year sentence in British prison

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Category: International Justice

Created on Thursday, 10 October 2013 00:00

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War criminal Charles Taylor to serve 50-year sentence in British prison

Ministry of Justice confirms that former Liberian president will be transferred from Dutch prison to serve his sentence

Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent

Charles Taylor, the convicted former Liberian president, will serve his 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British prison, the ministry of justice has confirmed.

The announcement follows a final ruling by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in The Hague last month. The UK is the only country that has publicly offered to accommodate him.

The offer was made in 2006 by the then foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, as part of a diplomatic deal to bring the onetime warlord to justice. For the past seven years Taylor, now 65, has been held in a small Dutch jail pending the last appeal stage of the UN tribunal.

Lawyers for Taylor had pressed the court to allow him to serve out his sentence in an African jail nearer home.

Justice minister Jeremy Wright told parliament in a written statement: "Former President Taylor will now be transferred to a prison in the UK to serve [his] sentence."

He added: "The United Kingdom's offer to enforce any sentence imposed on former President Taylor by the SCSL was crucial to ensuring that he could be transferred to The Hague to stand trial for his crimes." He said the decision had wide cross party support when it was passed in June 2007 and that "Her Majesty's government would meet the associated costs".

"International justice is central to foreign policy. It is essential for securing the rights of individuals and states, and for securing peace and reconciliation," he said. "The conviction of Charles Taylor is a landmark moment for international justice. It clearly demonstrates that those who commit atrocities will be held to account and that no matter their position they will not enjoy impunity."

The minister did not identify which prison Taylor will be held in. It is likely, at least initially, to be a high security jail.

The average cost of keeping a prisoner in a British jail is around £40,000 a year. Conditions in a British prison are likely to be more restrictive for Taylor than his experiences in Scheveningen jail in the Netherlands, where he has been detained for the past seven years. A recent biography claimed he had fathered a child with his wife during conjugal visits there.

The Hague court found Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law, including murder, forced labour and slavery, recruiting child soldiers and rape.

He had been criminally responsible for "aiding and abetting" the Revolutionary United Front and other factions carrying out atrocities in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2002.

The court heard that the Liberian leader knew from August 1997 about the campaign of terror being waged against the civilian population in Sierra Leone and about the sale of "blood diamonds" in return for weapons.

Among the atrocities detailed was the beheading of civilians. Victims' heads were often displayed at checkpoints. On one occasion a man was killed, publicly disembowelled and his intestines stretched across a road to form another checkpoint. "The purpose," Judge Richard Lussick said, "was to instil terror."

Taylor was the first former head of state to face judgment in an international court on war crimes charges since judges in Nuremberg convicted Karl Dönitz, the admiral who led Nazi Germany for a brief period following Adolf Hitler's suicide.

The UK's record on holding war crimes inmates is not unblemished. In 2010, the Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstić, who was serving a 35-year sentence in Wakefield prison, was stabbed in his cell by three Muslim inmates.

Source: The Guardian UK