Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-24-Speech-4-167"
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"en.20050224.14.4-167"2
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". – Mr President, Africa has for too long been torn by civil strife, hunger, economic mismanagement and blatant corruption. It is now, at last, beginning to get its own house in order with regional blocs and continent-wide supranational institutions committed to observing international human rights law, such as Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) and the African Union.
Charles Taylor, as a former warlord, ruled Liberia brutally between 1997 and 2003 as a bloody dictator, sanctioning rape and summary executions at the end of that country's 14 years of civil war, but he was forced into exile as part of a peace-making deal mediated by Nigeria. During Taylor's reign, ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Liberia because of the abuses he perpetrated. In power, he supported the Revolutionary United Front in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which, in alliance with renegade soldiers, overthrew President Kabbah in 1997, having wreaked havoc in the country since 1991, with tens of thousands of civilians brutally slaughtered, and which made use of child soldiers.
The War Crimes Tribunal in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is a hybrid mix of national and international justice, accepted by all parties and with UN backing, and aims to be a model for other war courts not mandated by Chapter 7 UN resolutions. Taylor was indicted for war crimes by this court in 2003, but Nigeria is refusing to extradite him, claiming he has sovereign immunity and benefits from the asylum deal they agreed to.
A children's rights group called FOCUS is now calling for his surrender to the court in Sierra Leone, directly blaming Taylor for the limb amputation of thousands of women and children in Sierra Leone, as well as for ordering bloody, cross-border raids into neighbouring Guinea. We now know that sovereign immunity no longer applies for war crimes, but the group has also pointed out that Taylor has breached the terms of his asylum by interfering in Liberian politics ahead of the elections scheduled there for October and by financing parties sympathetic to him with money he obtained corruptly through the diamond trade when in power as President. He presumably hopes that, with a change of government, he will be allowed back.
President Obasanjo of Nigeria is currently Chairman of the African Union, and his country must set an example to the international community, and end impunity for bloody tyrants, by handing Taylor over."@en1
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