{{Prosecutors and lawyers defending former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor will Tuesday begin their appeals at Sierra Leone’s UN-backed special court (SCSL) against his 50-year prison sentence for fuelling the west African nation’s savage civil war.}}<\/p>\n
Appeals judges are to question and listen to arguments both from prosecutors demanding a heavier sentence and from the former strongman’s lawyers calling for his sentence to be quashed or reduced.<\/p>\n
The hearing, set for 10:00 am (0900 GMT) at the SCSL’s headquarters in the leafy suburb of Leidschendam outside The Hague, is to be dominated by particularly complex legal arguments – with both sides saying judges made mistakes in law in convicting Taylor in April last year and sentencing him in May.<\/p>\n
The UN-backed court’s 50-year sentence against Taylor, 64, for “some of the most heinous crimes in human history” was widely welcomed around the world at the time.<\/p>\n
Judges said he aided and abetted rebel forces fighting against Freetown during Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war, known for its mutilations, drugged child soldiers and sex slaves.<\/p>\n
In return, trial judges found, Taylor was paid in “blood diamonds” mined by slave labour in areas kept under the control of ruthless Sierra Leonean rebels.<\/p>\n
The historic sentence was the first handed down against a former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors, who declined to comment ahead of the hearing, are to argue that trial judges made a mistake by only convicting Taylor of aiding and abetting the notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and other rebel groups.<\/p>\n
NMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Prosecutors and lawyers defending former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor will Tuesday begin their appeals at Sierra Leone’s UN-backed special court (SCSL) against his 50-year prison sentence for fuelling the west African nation’s savage civil war.}} Appeals judges are to question and listen to arguments both from prosecutors demanding a heavier sentence and from the former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}