Lawyers for Charles Taylor, ex-president of Liberia, have told his trial for crimes against humanity that he tried to bring peace to the country. He denies 11 charges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, including murder, rape and torture.
Prosecutors say he controlled rebels who carried out atrocities during Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war. Mr Taylor is due to give evidence on Today. He is the first African leader to be tried by an international court.

As Mr Taylor listened in court, his lawyer Courtenay Griffiths opened the defense, saying: “We do not take issue with the fact that terrible atrocities occurred in Sierra Leone. “This case should not be about what happened in SierraLeone, but who bears the greatest responsibility, bearing in mind that Charles Taylor tried to achieve peace.” Before the session started, Claire Carlton-Hanciles, of the court’s defense office, told the BBC that Mr Taylor was ready to defend himself and had been prepared for the past six weeks by defense lawyers.

“I saw Mr Taylor about two days ago. He is in high spirits.”
In May, judges rejected a request by Mr Taylor’s defense team to acquit him because of a lack of evidence. The prosecution says Mr Taylor planned atrocities committed by RevolutionaryUnited Front rebels during Sierra Leone’s civil war, which ended in 2002. The RUF was notorious for using machetes to hack the limbs off civilians. Mr Taylor is accused of passing guns to the RUF in exchange for diamonds from Sierra Leone.

But his defense claims that Mr Taylor did not command RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, sell them weapons in exchange for blood diamonds or recruit child soldiers. Mr Taylor started Liberia’s civil war in 1989, before being elected president in 1997. After a period of exile in Nigeria, he was eventually extradited from Liberia in 2006. The trial, being held by the UN-backed Special Court for SierraLeone, was moved to the Netherlands from Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, amid fears it could create instability in the country and neighboring Liberia.