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Charles Taylor (born January 28, 1948) was the President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. A prominent warlord in the Liberian Civil War of the early 1990s, he was subsequently elected president, but his time in office was marked by rebellion and regional conflict and he was forced into exile after another civil war.

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Taylor was born in Arthington, a city near Monrovia. His mother was a member of the Gola tribe. According to most reports his father was Americo-Liberian, although other sources claim he was actually an Afro-Trinidadian immigrant. Taylor was a student at Bentley College in Boston, USA from 1972 to 1977. He was briefly arrested in 1979 after threatening to take over the Liberian diplomatic mission in New York. He returned to Liberia in 1980.

In December 1989 Taylor launched an armed uprising from Côte d'Ivoire. His forces, known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), soon controlled most of the country. Doe was overthrown, and tortured to death the following year by Prince Johnson, at that time an ally of Taylor's. Doe's fall led to the political fragmentation of the country into violent factionalism. In mid-1990, Prince Johnson's supporters split from Taylor's group and captured Monrovia for themselves, depriving Taylor of outright victory.

The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources (especially iron ore, timber and rubber). Up to 200,000 people were killed and more than 1 million were forced from their homes.

In 1991, Foday Sankoh began a revolutionary campaign in Sierra Leone near the Liberian border as the leader of the Revolutionary United Front. Among that initial group of about 100 revolutionaries were Sierra Leonean dissidents, mercenaries from Burkina Faso, and fighters loyal to Taylor. The relationship between Sankoh and Taylor had begun in the 1980s when both men were in Libya with the purpose of learning from and gaining the support of Muammar Qaddafi. These men were joined in their opposition of what they saw to be pro-western regimes. Once the Sierra Leone Civil War began, Sankoh relied heavily on ties with both Qaddafi and Taylor, with whom he traded diamonds for guns span .

When in 1992, Sam Bockarie rose to the position of Battle Group Commander in the RUF, Taylor reached out to the young man, whom he may have met during Bockarie's youth. Taylor advised Bockarie off and on for the next five years, and when Sankoh went into exile in Nigeria in March of 1997, Bockarie took the position of leader of the RUF. Taylor's support of Bockarie, both in the form of arms and advice, allowed the RUF to march on Freetown, and eventually forced President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to negotiate. The Lomé Peace Accord was signed in July of 1999, although violence continued until 2001. On 7 March, 2003, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) indicted Taylor, charging him with crimes against humanity, an indictment which still stands. In 2003, Liberian forces under the orders of Taylor killed Bockarie in a shootout. Some have claimed that Taylor ordered Bockarie killed in order to prevent Bockarie from testifying against him at the SCSL span

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia's president on August 2, 1997, following a landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by observers, although Taylor's victory has been partially attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost, and therefore many people may have voted for him simply to preserve peace. For example, his campaign song included the words "he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I'll vote for him."

In 1999, a rebellion against Taylor began in northern Liberia, led by a group calling itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). This group has been frequently accused of grave atrocities, and there is strong evidence that the group is allied with or controlled by the government of neighboring Guinea.

In early 2003, as LURD was consolidating its control of northern Liberia, a second rebel group, called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and allegedly backed by the Ivorian government, emerged in southern Liberia and achieved rapid successes. By the summer, Taylor's government controlled less than a third of Liberia.

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor's arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor's administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. [3]

The indictment was issued at Taylor's official visit to Ghana. With the backing of South African president Thabo Mbeki, against the urging of Sierra Leone president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Ghanaian police failed to arrest Taylor, who returned to Monrovia.df

During his absence for the peace talks in Ghana, it is alleged that the US urged the vice president, Moses Blah, to seize power. Upon his return, Taylor briefly dismissed Blah from his post, only to reinstate him a few days later. Meanwhile, the rebel group LURD initiated a siege of Monrovia, and several bloody battles were fought as Taylor's forces defeated rebel attempts to capture the city. The pressure on Taylor increased further as U.S. President George W. Bush stated that Taylor "must leave Liberia" twice in July 2003.

Taylor insisted that he would resign only if American peacekeeping troops were deployed to Liberia. President Bush publicly called upon Charles Taylor to resign and leave the country if any American involvement was to be considered. Meanwhile, the African states, in particular the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the leadership of Nigeria, sent troops to Liberia with the assistance of US$10 million dollars from the US[4]. On August 6, a 32 member U.S. military assessment team were deployed as a liaison with the ECOWAS troops[5]. On July 9, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo offered Taylor safe exile in his country, but only if Taylor stays out of Liberian politics[6].

On August 10, Charles Taylor appeared on national television in Liberia to announce that he would resign the following day and hand power to the nation's vice president, Moses Blah. He harshly criticized the United States in his farewell address, saying that the Bush administration's insistence that he leave the country was a foolish policy that would hurt Liberia.

On August 11, Taylor resigned, leaving Moses Blah as his successor until a transitional government was established on October 14. At the handover were Ghanaian President John Kufuor, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, representing African regional councils. The U.S. brought three warships with 2,300 Marines into view of the coast. Taylor flew to Nigeria where the Nigerian government provided houses for him and his entourage in Calabar.

In November 2003, the United States Congress passed a bill that included a reward offer of two million dollars for Taylor's capture. While the peace agreement had guaranteed Taylor safe exile in Nigeria, it also required that he not attempt to influence Liberian politics, a requirement his critics claim he has disregarded. On December 4, Interpol issued a "red notice", suggesting that countries have the international right to arrest him. Taylor is now on Interpol's Most Wanted list, noted as possibly being dangerous, and is wanted for "crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention." However, Nigeria, which is currently holding Taylor, has stated that it will not submit to Interpol's demands, unless Liberia wants to try him; if so, Nigeria will return Taylor to Liberia for a fair trial.

On March 6, 2004, the United States presented a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council seeking a freeze of Taylor's assets, as well as those of his family and allies.

"I would be the sacrificial lamb."

"Jesus Christ was accused of being a murderer in his time."

Hirsch, John L. Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001