A UN-mandated court has charged Liberian President Charles Taylor with war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's 11-year-long civil war, a court spokesman has said.
Taylor has been indicted for "bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violation of international humanitarian law in Sierra Leone until November 13th, 1996," court David Crane of the United States said in a communique issued in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown on today.
"On behalf of the people of Sierra Leone and the international community, I announce the indictment of Charles Taylor," Crane said.
The Liberian president was already under UN sanctions for allegedly backing Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, notorious for recruiting child soldiers and hacking off people's limbs in the brutal war, which raged from 1991 until January last year and claimed up to 200,000 lives.
Both Taylor and the rebels have been accused of flagrant rights abuses including murder, torture, kidnapping, rape and using child fighters.
Taylor, himself a former warlord in Liberia's seven-year civil war, which ended in 1997, was in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, Wednesday for peace talks with rebels to end a four-year-old conflict in his own country, which neighbours Sierra Leone.
The RUF's leader Foday Sankoh is currently detained by the war crimes court and his lieutenant Sam Bockarie, a known ally of Taylor's, was also under indictment but was killed last month in Liberia.
Taylor came to power after winning elections in 1997, the year Liberia's civil war ended.
The indictment against him had been approved March 7th but was under seal this afternoon, Crane said.
AFP