CHARLES TAYLOR, the former Liberian president, claimed the war crimes case against him was built on lies and deceit as he took the stand as a witness in his trial at a special court in The Hague yesterday.
Mr Taylor is accused of orchestrating a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone to gain control of the neighbouring country’s diamond resources, using methods including murder, sexual slavery and the recruitment of child soldiers during a decade-long civil war that left tens of thousands dead.
Wearing a dark suit and tinted glasses, the former president appeared entirely at ease amid the automated television cameras of the glass-enclosed courtroom that the Special Court for Sierra Leone is borrowing from the International Criminal Court. He has spent much of the past two years silently and impassively listening to evidence against him.
Protesting his innocence, the first African leader to be tried for war crimes seized on allegations of cannibalism made by a prosecution witness.
“Here, people have me eating human beings,” Mr Taylor told the court.
“Charles Taylor is supposed to be with an orderly of one of my security personnel sitting down eating human beings.
“Charles Taylor is supposed to be out there like some little common street thug involving himself in the acquiescence of rape and murder. This whole case has been about ‘Let’s get Taylor’ . . . Haven’t they had their pound of flesh yet? I am not guilty of all of these charges.”
Joseph “Zigzag” Marzah, who described himself as Mr Taylor’s former death squad commander, told the United Nations-backed court in March that he, Mr Taylor and Benjamin Yeaten, Mr Taylor’s former chief of staff, were members of a traditional west African secret religious society and had on several occasions eaten human hearts.
The prosecution case rests on evidence from 91 witnesses, many of whom have described in horrific detail atrocities committed during the 1991-2002 civil war that killed tens ofthousands of people and displaced a third of the population.– (Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2009)