Taylor who likened self to Jesus killed 400,000
Charles Taylor, the 64-year-old warlord, who once compared himself to Jesus Christ, was responsible for the deaths of nearly 400,000 people in civil conflicts in West Africa between 1989 and 2003.
Most of the deaths were in his own country Liberia, which he ruled from 1997 after terrorising it for nearly seven years and in neighbouring Sierra Leonne.
Taylor also encouraged rebellion in Ivory Coast and made Guinea anxious about its own potential for revolution.
A thrice-married lay preacher with an economics degree from Bentley College in the US State of Massachusetts, Taylor rose to power on the back of the rebellion he launched in 1989 against Liberia’s then military ruler Samuel Doe.
He had joined the Liberian civil service under Doe — who seized power in 1980 and opted for an authoritarian regime — but was sacked in 1983 for embezzling nearly one million dollars in government funds.
He skipped the country, returning to the United States where he was jailed on an extradition warrant.
But he escaped 16 months later and disappeared, resurfacing in December 1989 at the head of a rebellion backed by Libya and reportedly by Burkina Faso.
His National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) earned a reputation for extreme violence and was among the first to force children, some as young as 10, to carry guns.
“Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time,” he once told the BBC in an interview.
Seven grim years of war wearied the Liberian people, who in 1997 elected Taylor president, but his rise to power brought little relief to the country of 3.3 million.
Two years later, a second rebellion took place, this time against Taylor. Fighting ended when Taylor fled to Nigeria in 2003. He remained out of reach there until Nigeria in March 2006 bowed to international pressure to extradite him.
An AFP reporter, who visited his villa and met him briefly days before his arrest, found that he had access to a luxury Jaguar car with blacked out windows and diplomatic plates. He was also armed with a battery of cellphones.
