Charles Taylor Shown Who was the Boss
Judges at the United Nations backed special court for Sierra Leone have handed down a stiff sentence of fifty years behind bars to former National Patriotic Front of Liberia rebel strongman turned president Charles Ghankay Taylor in a landmark case that makes Taylor the first president to be forced from office and tried for crimes against humanity in a neighboring country, in a conflict that he remotely controlled first from his bases in the jungles of Liberia and later from the country's Executive Mansion.
Taylor who was early last month found guilty of 11 counts of war crimes including; acts of terrorism, murder, violence to life, rape, sexual slavery and violence, outrages upon personal dignity, violence to life-in particular cruel treatment, other in humane against humanity, use of child soldiers, enslavement, and pillage was sentenced today in The Hague and will be serving his lengthy sentence from the cold confines of a British jail. He was tried and will be jailed in Europe, as his trial in Sierra Leone was considered an enormous security risk, due to his extensive criminal history and support from thousands of former Liberian and Sierra Leone rebel fighters.
Taylor's Partners AFRC
Sierra Leone tabloid journalist Sylvia Olayinke Blyden who last month almost went into mourning on hearing that her former hero Charles Taylor was found guilty on eleven counts will be shell shocked at such a stiff sentence that will practically ensure that her man is kept locked up for life or until he is so old that the only food he will be able to eat will be rice pudding. Sylvia famously refused to print any news item in her Newspaper when Charles Taylor was convicted and now she will practically be bawling her eyes out that he is locked away for good.
The Unreasonable Blyden
Even where mountains of evidence against Taylor were presented at the war crimes tribunal supporting his involvement in the conflict in Sierra Leone for financial and strategic reasons, Sylvia Blyden maintained that he was just a convenient scapegoat and that it was the people of the southeast who bore the brunt of the civil war that were really to be blamed as they had opened their villages to let the RUF in. Even the fact that most town in the southeast were viciously attacked by a combination of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and NPFL rebels leading to the loss of thousands of lives in the region meant little to this excuse of a human being parading as a journalist. Recently she is engaged in a war of words with veteran octogenarian politician Sama Banya who was appalled at Sylvia Blyden's insane accusations against the people of southeast Sierra Leone.
In recent times Sylvia Blyden who used to call the current president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Koroma, a womanizer, accusing him of promoting his girlfriend a so called Arabella Foray above his wife Sia Koroma, has now thrown his support behind the president and is busy writing incendiary articles that pit the people of southeast Sierra Leone against those of the north. Sylvia Blyden's purpose of publicly fanning the flames of tribalism in Sierra Leone is yet to be determined, but as history can attest, it was the words of so called journalists, inciting Hutus against Tutsis, that led to the genocide in Rwanda that claimed close to a million lives in less than a month. Sierra Leones who just came out of ten years of brutal civil war should be wary of some of these former rebels who having failed in the bush, are now using other nefarious means of sowing conflict and discord in the country in furtherance of their aims.
Blyden's Nemesis Arabella Foray
In sentencing the 64 year old former warlord, Judge Richard Lussick described his crimes as being very serious serious both in terms od the scale of the crimes and their brutality. The Segbwema blog correspondent in the Hague states that it is hoped that Taylor's stiff sentence will be a lesson to other leaders that the days of treating their citizens like scum were over. It is hoped that president Assad of Syria who is busy massacring his people will learn from this.
APC Interior Minister Tarawally-Promising Murder in November
This sentence may also act as a deterrent to those in the APC government and SLPP opposition who may be planning violence ahead of the elections in November. The country's interior minister Musa Tarawally famously went on BBC claiming that the cash strapped government which cannot even afford to supply money to banks to pay their customers, bought millions of dollars of arms and ammunition for the OSDs to control the Sierra Leone opposition during the elections. Days after receiving the arms the police went on a killing spree in the strategic energy town of Bumbuna.
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