LAGOS — ONE year after he fled Liberia to take up political asylum in Nigeria, former warlord and war crimes suspect, Mr. Charles Taylor is an increasingly isolated and hated figure in his adoptive home. Last August, Nigeria’s President Olusegun
Obasanjo offered the former Liberian president asylum as part of an internationally-backed plan to revive the west African country’s stalled peace process and end its latest round of civil war.
With Taylor gone and United Nations peacekeepers in place, Liberian politicians have been able to set up a transitional government and to begin the process of disarming the rebel armies who challenged his rule.
Obasanjo’s statesmanship was widely praised at the time, but Taylor’s exile in a luxury villa in Calabar has since become mired in controversy, with many calling for the former leader to face justice.
UN-backed prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal in Liberia’s neighbour Sierra Leone want him to answer charges that he sponsored a brutal rebel movement there and shared responsibility for the atrocities it committed.
Obasanjo has refused to hand Taylor over, saying that only a future elected government in Liberia could demand his extradition, insisting that his continued exile in Calabar is vital to the on-going peace process.
Pressure is now however building slowly from within and without Nigeria for Taylor to be handed over.
“Charles Taylor is accused of breath-taking crimes,” John Campbell, the US Ambassador to Nigeria, told reporters last week.
“Our view is that he must answer for those crimes and we have a continuing dialogue with the Nigerian government about how to create the context in which this can happen,” he said.
The United States is grateful to Obasanjo for the role he and Nigeria’s peacekeeping troops have played in Liberia and Washington has been careful not to be seen to be bullying its ally.
But many US lawmakers as well as numerous international human rights groups are determined to see Taylor stand trial, and Obasanjo now faces polite but firm pressure from abroad to hand him over.
The US diplomat stressed that Taylor should eventually be brought before the courts for his role in Sierra Leone.
