CHARLES TAYLOR Biography - Polititians

 
 

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CHARLES TAYLOR

Name: Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor                                                 
Born: 28 January 1948 Arthington, Liberia                                             
                                                                                     
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born January 28, 1948) served as President of       
Liberia from August 2, 1997 to August 11, 2003. He was once Africa's most             
prominent warlord during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s, was         
elected president at the end of that conflict, was subsequently forced into           
exile, and is now in detention at the International Criminal Court, where he         
faces trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.                                   
                                                                                     
In December 1989, Taylor launched an armed uprising from Côte d'Ivoire into         
Liberia to overthrow its government. His forces, known as the National Patriotic     
Front of Liberia (NPFL), soon controlled most of the country. Then-president         
Samuel Doe was overthrown and tortured to death the following year by Prince         
Johnson, a former senior commander of Taylor's NPFL who broke away and formed         
the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, INPFL. Doe's fall led to         
the political fragmentation of the country into violent factionalism. In mid-1990,   
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, diamond, timber, and rubber).   
                                                                                     
Following the election of a new president in Liberia, the Nigerian government         
said on March 25, 2006 that Liberia was free to collect Taylor so that he might       
face war crimes charges in Liberian courts. The Nigerian government announced on     
March 28 that Taylor had disappeared from his residence in Calabar, Nigeria. On       
March 29, 2006, Taylor was arrested in Gamboru, along Nigeria's northeastern         
border with Cameroon. Nigerian authorities put him on a plane bound for Liberia       
and then handed him to the UN in Sierra Leone. On March 30, the Special Court         
requested permission to use the premises of the International Criminal Court in       
The Hague to carry out Taylor's trial, although the Special Court will still         
conduct the proceedings of the trial. In Taylor's absence, the trial began on         
June 4, 2007. He pleaded not guilty.