Liberian Jailed Warlord Charles Ghankay Taylor Sues for Right to theFamily Life he Deprived others Of.

Liberian Warlord Taylor

One of Africa's most infamous mass murderers, former Liberian warlord and President Charles Ghankay Taylor, the leader of a group of primitive rebels who specialized in torture, rape and cannibalism have just sued the British Government for allegedly depriving him of family life. Charles Taylor was jailed for a 50 year term by the Special Court for Sierra Leone  for crimes against humanity, a sentence he appealed against and lost.

It can be recalled that when Taylor was sentenced to the lengthy stretch that was essentially a life sentence, considering his age, he appealed to the court to be jailed in Africa, preferably in Rwanda, so it could be easier for him to see his family and probably have conjugal visits from his many female partners. 

Taylor with His Child Soldiers

The court refused Taylor's request for special treatment as jail birds do not usually determine where they spent their sentence. Given his history of jail escapes and his enormous wealth, what could prevent him from giving some poor jailers in Rwanda  huge amounts of money to convince them to release him? Afterwards Rwanda is just another third world country in which the jailers are probably paid next to nothing. So the special court took up the British offer to have Taylor caged at a Prison in Durham county. 

A Taylor Victim

Taylor is now suing the UK government for preventing him from seeing his fifteen children and his wife, who is also a politician in his native country Liberia. Taylor must have been particularly emboldened by the fact that Prince Yormie Johnson a less popular rebel leader who famously cut the ears of former Liberian President Doe before murdering him on video camera, is now a senator and actually had the third number of votes in the last Presidential elections, much to the amazement of the international community. Prince Johnson was a former Taylor battle group commander who broke away and formed his own rebel movement.

Charles Taylor and his men used to eat the heart of their enemies for bravery and were guilty of some of the most heinous war crimes that have ever been recorded in civil conflict including the disembowelment of pregnant women, the rape of children and using murder as a terror tactic in war.

Charles Taylor was the major backer of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, a group of rag tag militants led by a former jailed army corporal Foday Sankoh who are famous for ordering the whole scale slaughtering of villages and the hacking and amputation the limbs of their victims. When the noose was about to tighten around Taylor's neck for supporting this depraved group, he ordered his men to kill the group's battle group commander Sam "Maskita" Bockarie in order to eliminate an individual that would tie him directly to the RUF. Sam Bockarie was on mercenary duty between Liberia and Ivory Coast at the time.

Golley and RUF Allies

Charles Taylor's lawyers have prepared a case that has been lodged at the Sierra Leone special court stating that his jail term was in violation of his human rights.

Taylor must also have been emboldened by developments in Sierra Leone over the past two years. Two close allies of his protege Foday Sankoh have been rehabilitated and given top official positions. A former associate of Foday Sankoh, Sylvia Blyden, the only Sierra Leonean who came out publicly to condemn the jailing of Charles Taylor claiming it was a very sad day in her life, is now the Special Executive Assistant to Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma. The main RUF spokesman Omrie Golley who was instrumental in convincing segments of the international community that RUF was just a movement of Freedom fighters in spite of their heinous crimes has also recently been appointed as Sierra Leone's Ambassador to Korea in a move that baffled even diehard supporters of the Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma.

Charles Taylor's brief tenure as President of Liberia gave him the chance to loot his country's treasury and is reportedly still extremely rich. He has therefore been spending his millions to pay lawyers to win him his freedom and go back to a country where he is still seen as a hero by many of the thousands of young boys he was able to convince to fight for him. For the brief time that he was President, his wife was in charge of the country's central bank, while he controlled all logging and mineral concessions. Charles Taylor famously gave a bag of uncut diamonds to modeling superstar Naomi Campell just to say hello and he is still considered to be one of the richest men in Africa as Liberia has never been able to trace where he hid his wealth.

The British government states that Taylor is being treated like any other jailbird in its county jails. One angry British MP made the following statement upon hearing Taylor's frivolous allegations, "It shows the corruption of human rights that such a brutal warlord convicted of crimes against humanity including terrorism, rape and conscripting child soldiers, thinks he can claim jail violates his right to family life. If he's successful, it would turn British human rights laws into a laughing stock around the world."

The Segbwema Blog will continue to monitor this new move by Taylor to remain in the news.