Ocampo Four mum as Taylor gets 50 years

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been handed a 50-year jail sentence by an international tribunal sitting at The Hague.

As the severe jail term sent shockwaves across the world, the four Kenyans also facing charges before a similar court at The Hague refused to comment on Mr Tayor’s sentence.

The lawyers for Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Eldoret North MP William Ruto and broadcaster Joshua arap Sang also refused to comment when contacted by the Daily Nation.

The fourth accused is former Public Service head Francis Muthaura. Approached at the Annual General Meeting of Matatu Owners Association in Kiambu County, Mr Kenyatta brushed off questions about his views on Mr Taylor’s sentence.

Separately, Mr Ruto and Mr Sang also indicated that they had nothing to say about the severity of the jail term imposed on the former Liberian leader and the process leading to his trial and conviction by an international tribunal.

Kenyan Appeal Court Judge Philip Waki, who chaired the Commisison of Inquiry into Kenya’s post-election violence, will sit as alternate judge on Mr Taylor’s appeal at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. (READ: Waki to sit on UN Sierra Leone court)

The Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor, 64, guilty on all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front during the country’s brutal 1991-2001 civil war.

In return, he was paid in diamonds mined by slave labour in areas under control of the rebels, who murdered, raped and kept sex slaves, hacked off limbs and forced children aged under 15 to fight, the court found.

Though the Sierra Leone tribunal established by the United Nations is different for the International Criminal Court that is set to try four Kenyan post-election violence suspects, it follows the principles of international jurisdication for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

Devastating effects

He will serve any prison term in the UK but will be held in The Hague until the end of his appeal.

“The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history,” said Special Court for Sierra Leone judge Richard Lussick, reading out the ruling on Wednesday.

“The trial chamber unanimously sentences you to a single term of imprisonment for 50 years on all counts,” the judge said at the international court based in Leidschendam, just outside The Hague.

“The trial chamber noticed that the effects of these crimes on the families and society as a whole in Sierra Leone was devastating,” he said.

It was the first sentence against a former head of state in an international court since the Nuremberg Nazi trials in 1946.

Taylor, with gold-rimmed glasses and cropped hair, a dark suit and gold tie, listened with his eyes closed as the judge handed down the sentence, which Taylor’s team, and prosecutors, have two weeks to appeal.

Chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis had asked for 80 years’ prison for Taylor, once one of west Africa’s most powerful men. (SEE IN PICTURES: Charles Taylor)

Speaking after sentencing, Hollis said her team would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal.

“The sentence today does not replace amputated limbs, does not bring back those who have been murdered or forced to become sexual slaves” or child soldiers, she said.

“But it brings back some measure of justice... for those lucky enough to survive.”

In Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, hundreds of survivors of the war that claimed 120,000 lives watched the proceedings in silence on a large TV screen.

Among them was Al Hadji Jusu Jarka, former chairman of the association of amputees, who had both his arms cut off by the rebels.

“The curtain has now been drawn on Charles Taylor,” the war survivor said. “I hope he will be haunted by his deeds as he languishes in jail.”

Human rights activist Charles Mambu called the sentence “excellent” and said: “It shows that it’s no longer business as usual.”

Taylor’s lawyer Courtenay Griffiths said the sentence meant that “effectively Charles Taylor will die in prison,” while the legal team indicated it would appeal.

Judge Lussick said 80 years would have been excessive, but that, given Taylor’s position as Liberia’s president from 1997 to 2003, he “held a position of public trust and higher authority which he abused.”

Throughout the trial, Taylor maintained his innocence and insisted he was instrumental in eventually ending Sierra Leone’s civil war.

But the judge said that, while Taylor publicly played a substantial role, “secretly he was fuelling hostilities between the (rebels) and the democratically elected government of Sierra Leone”.

Therefore, “Mr Taylor’s role in the peace process is not a mitigating factor,” he found. The nearly four-year trial, which wrapped up in March 2011, saw several high-profile witnesses testify.

Among them was supermodel Naomi Campbell, who told of a gift from Taylor of “dirty diamonds” she received in 1997 at a charity ball hosted by South Africa’s then President Nelson Mandela.

Authorities in Nigeria arrested Taylor in March 2006 as he tried to flee from exile after being forced to quit Liberia three years earlier, under international pressure to end that country’s own civil war.