{{Liberia’s ex-president Charles Taylor is to hear his fate before a UN-backed court tomorrow when it hands down an appeals judgement against his 50-year sentence for arming Sierra Leone rebels.}}
Taylor, 65, was found guilty last year of lending support to rebels from neighbouring Sierra Leone who waged a terror campaign during a civil war that claimed 120,000 lives between 1991 and 2001, in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined by slave labour.
Presiding Judge George King is to hand down a verdict at 11am at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Leidschendam, a suburb just outside The Hague where Taylor’s case was moved for security reasons.
His sentencing in May 2012 for ‘some of the most heinous crimes in human history’ was the first handed down by an international court against a former head of state since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.
As Liberia’s president from 1997 to 2003, Taylor gave rebels guns and ammunition during the conflict, known for its mutilations, drugged child soldiers and sex slaves, trial judges found.
Throughout the trial, Taylor maintained his innocence. His lawyers in July last year appealed his conviction on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying the judges during his marathon nearly four-year-long trial “made systematic errors” in evaluating evidence.
They argued at his appeal hearing in January that there was no evidence linking him to crimes committed by Sierra Leone’s brutal rebel forces, nor did he provide logistics, guns and ammunition.
{wirestory}
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