ABOUT 2 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION, OR 618,000 AMERICANS, DIED IN THE U.S. CIVIL War, or War of Rebellion, or War of Northern Aggression, or War Between the States, at a time when the U.S. population was more than thirty-one million. About three hundred thousand Liberians, or 10 percent of the Liberian population, died in the long period of civil strife associated with the rebellion and then the reign of Charles Taylor, from 1989 to 2003, which occurred when the Liberian population was about three million people.
Charles Taylor stood trial in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, but the trial was moved first to The Hague, and then to Leidschendam in The Netherlands, because everyone knew it was too dangerous to try Taylor in Sierra Leone itself. Too many of Taylor’s friends were still active in Liberia and Sierra Leone, places in which the rule of law is more hope than reality. The trial began in 2007 and judgment was rendered in 2012. The trial was conducted before the Special Court for Sierra Leone but under the auspices of the International Court of Justice, itself a court of the United Nations, which was created to hear accusations of crimes against humanity.
The legal status of crimes against humanity is unclear and represents an evolving body of international law. Charles Taylor was charged only with his activities involving Sierra Leone. He could not be charged in an international court with crimes committed in Liberia while he was the head of state because of a principle called sovereign immunity, which means that a head of state cannot be charged with a crime in his or her own country while serving as head of state by anybody other than the country itself.
Taylor is reputed to be a very wealthy man who still has considerable influence in Liberia, where it is claimed that he still has friends and associates in his employ. He is also reputed to control considerable assets in Liberia—timber, iron, and diamonds—through those friends and associates.
Final arguments in the three-year trial were heard on March 11, 2011, almost eight years after Taylor fell from power and almost five years after he was turned over to the International Court of Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
On April 26, 2012, the Court found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting eleven crimes, including murder, rape, sexual slavery, and forced labor. He was also convicted of conspiring with the Sierra Leonean Revolutionary United Front to plan attacks in three different areas of the country, including the capital, Freetown, and diamond-rich district of Kono.
The civil war in Sierra Leone claimed some fifty thousand lives. Thousands more Sierra Leoneans were forced to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves. Thousands more yet had limbs amputated.
On May 30, 2012, Taylor was sentenced to serve fifty years in jail for his crimes. That sentence was appealed by both prosecution and defense and was affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2013.
Taylor was never indicted for his role in the rape and destruction of Liberia itself. If found innocent of charges in Sierra Leone, Taylor would have returned to Liberia a free man.