Judges reject Charles Taylor call for jail transfer

Judges reject Charles Taylor call for jail transfer

An international tribunal said Wednesday it had rejected a request from Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor to be allowed serve the remainder of his 50-year jailterm for war crimes in an African jail.

The announcement was made by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which
convicted Taylor in 2012 of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed
during a bloody 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone, which neighbours Liberia.

Taylor, 67, is serving his sentence at Frankland prison near Durham in
northeastern England.

The former warlord has complained that his wife and daughters have been refused
entry to Britain and asked to be moved to a prison in Rwanda instead.

“The motion is rejected,” a three-judge bench of the court said in a decision
handed down on January 30, but only published on Wednesday.

“Prisoners do not have the right to choose their place of detention,” the tribunal
added in a press release.

Other inmates convicted by the tribunal for atrocities in Sierra Leone are serving
their sentences in Rwanda, but “Mr Taylor had no justification for demanding that
he be treated in the same way as other prisoners from Africa, given his
exceptional circumstances and the gravity of his offences,” the court said.

The judges found that his wife and daughters’ inability to visit him in jail was not
due to “interference with his rights to family life.”

“Rather, this was due to their failure to provide information showing they intended
to leave the UK at the end of their visit” and Taylor’s wife’s “failure to comply
with the United Kingdom visa requirements.”

The judges also cited a UN Security Council resolution that said Taylor’s presence
in west Africa could pose a threat to peace and security in the region.

A spokesman for Sierra Leone’s government, Abdulai Bayraytay, hailed the
decision, telling AFP it was “in the best interest of justice” and a “way of
combatting impunity”.

Taylor was arrested in 2006 and sentenced at The Hague in 2012 for what judges
called “some of the most heinous crimes in human history”.

As president of Liberia between 1997 and 2003, he supplied guns and ammunition
to Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels across the border in Sierra Leone, who
were notorious for mutilations, conscripting child soldiers and taking sex slaves.
Taylor was found guilty of backing the rebels in return for “blood diamonds” mined
by slave labour.

A number of famous witnesses took the stand during Taylor’s trial, including
actress Mia Farrow and model Naomi Campbell.

One of the victims of the RUF’s amputation campaigns on Wednesday also
welcomed the rejection of Taylor’s transfer request.

Brima Sillah, who lost an arm in an attack during an attack in the in the eastern
Kailahun province in 1998 said “no one should have pity” for the ex-Liberian
leader.

“Charles Taylor’s troubles are only beginning,” said Sillah, who works as a security
guard in the capital Freetown. “Now he knows what it means to pay for your
crimes.”