On this day in 2003, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo says in an interview with foreign journalists that he will surrender ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor to face a war crimes trial.
President Obasanjo, Taylor's host in exile, has adamantly resisted surrendering Taylor on an existing indictment by a United Nations-backed court but made it clear on Tuesday November 24, 2003 during a media chat that he would listen if Liberia itself asked.
Taylor has lived in exile in Calabar, Cross River state Nigeria since early August, 2003 when he fled, under international pressure, as rebels laid siege to his capital, Monrovia.
If Liberia’s new interim government decides it wants him to face charges there, ”then I believe he will understand sufficiently the need to go home”, Obasanjo told foreign reporters, at his farm in Ota, Ogun state Nigeria.
Asked what he would do if Taylor resisted, Obasanjo responded, ”I would persuade him.”
Liberia’s government has not specifically said it wanted Taylor for trial. Interim leader Gyude Bryant, appointed under an August 18 peace deal, has said he fears war-crimes trials would harm reconciliation in the country.
Taylor, a former rebel, launched Liberia into 14 years of conflict in 1989, when he led an initially small insurgency to overthrow the government.
The UN indictment accuses Taylor of backing rebels in a vicious 10-year terror campaign in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The administration of United States President George Bush has disavowed moves by the US Congress to place rewards for Taylor’s surrender to the UN court.
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