CNN) -- The first former head of state to be
convicted of war crimes since World War II was sentenced to 50 years in prison
Wednesday by an international court in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Special Court for
Sierra Leone convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor last month of
supplying and encouraging rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone in a campaign of
terror, involving murder, rape, sexual slavery and the conscription children
younger than 15.
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He was also found guilty
of using Sierra Leone's diamond deposits to help fuel its civil war with arms
and guns while enriching himself with what have commonly come to be known as
"blood diamonds."
Taylor directed his gaze
downward while Presiding Judge Richard Lussick read the sentencing statement,
which began with a horror cabinet of carnage committed in Sierra Leone by
rebels from the Revolutionary United Front, which the former president backed.
He spoke of amputations
with machetes -- some carried out by child soldiers forced to do so -- and read
accounts by witnesses who suffered under the violence.
"Witness TF1064 was
forced to carry a bag containing human heads," Lussick said. "On the
way, the rebels ordered her to laugh as she carried the bags dripping with
blood."
Upon arrival, "the
bag was emptied, and she saw the heads of her children."
A former child soldier,
conscripted at age 12, in his testimony told of "having the letters RUF
carved into his chest," Lussick said. "When ordered on a food-finding
mission to rape an old woman they found at a farmhouse, the boy cried and
refused, for which he was punished."
The prosecution had
asked the Special Court for Sierra Leone to sentence Taylor, who was president
of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, to 80 years behind bars, but the judges found the
recommendation "excessive," citing the "limited scope" of
the conviction in key attacks.
The prosecutors had
failed to prove that Taylor assumed direct command over rebels who committed
atrocities.
There is no death
penalty in international criminal law, and Taylor, 64, will serve out his
sentence in a British prison.
The atrocities he was
convicted of supporting occurred over the course of five years -- almost his
entire presidency -- and reached a peak in 1998 and 1999. Sierra Leone's civil
war lasted from 1991 to 2002, ultimately leaving 50,000 dead or missing.
Although Taylor was not
on the battlefield in Sierra Leone, the court saw his position of power as
president of the neighboring country and the use of his own military's
capabilities to stoke up RUF rebels as making him directly responsible for the
bloodshed he encouraged.
Taylor does not see
himself as a war criminal but as a victim -- a leader wronged by corruption and
a hypocritical hand of justice with a political agenda.
"I never stood a
chance," he said last week during his final courtroom stand. "Only
time will tell how many other African heads of state will be destroyed."
Taylor accused the
United States government of throwing the trial by paying prosecutors millions
of dollars and claimed that witnesses had been bought.
He has expressed no
remorse and insisted his intent was far from what had been portrayed by
prosecutors. He has described himself as a peacemaker, saying he should be
spared a harsh sentence.
His defense attorneys
pointed to the former Liberian president's role in the peace process that ended
the civil war as a mitigating factor in his sentencing.
But after lengthy
consideration, the panel of judges -- which in addition to Lassick included Judge
Teresa Doherty and Judge Julia Sebutinde -- did not buy it.
"While Mr. Taylor
publicly played a substantial role in this process ... secretly, he was
fuelling hostilities," Lassick said, supplying rebels with arms and
ammunition.
Last month's landmark
ruling by the Special Court for Sierra Leone against Taylor was the first war
crimes conviction of a former head of state by an international court since the
Nuremberg trials after World War II that convicted Adm. Karl Doenitz, who
became president of Germany briefly after Adolf Hitler's suicide.
Former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic was tried by an international tribunal, but he
died before a judgment was issued.
Taylor, 64, was found
guilty of all 11 counts of aiding and abetting the deadly rebel campaign in
Sierra Leone.
He was a pivotal figure
in Liberian politics for decades and was forced out of office under
international pressure in 2003. He fled to Nigeria, where border guards
arrested him three years later as he was attempting to cross into Chad.
The United Nations and
the Sierra Leone government jointly set up the special tribunal to try those
who played the biggest role in the atrocities. The court was moved to the
Netherlands from Sierra Leone, where emotions about the civil war still run high.
A video of Taylor's conviction
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