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| Africa: North |
| Taylor still in business in exile, plotted assassination |
| 2005-04-28 |
| The chief prosecutor of an UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone has accused Charles Taylor, exiled former Liberian president, of masterminding an assassination attempt on the president of neighboring Guinea in January this year. David Crane, a former US Defense Department lawyer, said he had evidence that Mr. Taylor backed the gunmen who fired on President Lansana Conté's convoy in Conakry, the Guinean capital. "His assassination attempt on Conté marks him as a true threat to international peace and security," Mr. Crane said. The Sierra Leone special court has already indicted Mr. Taylor on 17 counts of crimes against humanity for his role in supporting Sierra Leone's rebels in a war that caused tens of thousands of deaths. Mr. Taylor has yet to face trial. The warlord-turned-president was at the centre of more than a decade of conflict in Liberia that spilled into neighboring West African countries. He agreed to step down as Liberia's president in 2003 when Nigeria offered him asylum to prevent further bloodshed as rebels surrounded Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Regional analysts say Guinea is considered the weakest link in the chain of interlinked countries in West Africa that Mr. Taylor may be eyeing as a base for a new regional war. General Conté's health is a concern to those who fear a power vacuum if he dies. He has ruled Guinea since taking power in a coup in 1984. A recent report by Human Rights Watch documented detailed interviews in August last year with 60 former fighters from different conflicts in the region. It noted a third of them had been solicited by different recruiters to fight either for or against General Conté. A special court document obtained by the Financial Times alleges that Mr. Taylor, who escaped detention in the US in 1985, has also broken the terms of his asylum in Nigeria by traveling to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital, in February. There, the document alleges he met collaborators including Francis Galawulo, a Liberian lawyer who has recently announced his ambitions to contest Liberia's presidential elections slated for October. The document also alleges that Mr. Taylor's master plan includes toppling the government in Ivory Coast. Both Guinea and Ivory Coast backed Liberian rebel movements that conquered swathes of the largely forested country. Hardliners in the Ivory Coast government say Mr. Taylor and the government of Burkina Faso have supported Ivorian rebels in the west and the north of the country respectively. Analysts say Guinea, which has a third of the world's known bauxite reserves, would provide Mr. Taylor with ample resources to fund a new war chest. Mr. Taylor sustained his previous campaigns through the sales of timber and diamonds from Liberia and Sierra Leone. International investigators say he also laundered diamonds through al-Qaeda. The special court has been lobbying hard for Mr. Taylor to be handed over for trial, but the Nigerian government says it can only do this when an elected Liberian government asks Nigeria to extradite him. The Nigerian government said it would never have allowed Mr. Taylor to leave the port city of Calabar, where he is supposed to be held. "There is not a single iota of truth in that allegation," Remi Oyo, presidential spokeswoman, said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Chuck? Back again? Rats. :tap: Nope. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-28 5:37:53 PM |