Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Charles Taylor
born 1948
Warlord, elected president, and the first head of state convicted by an international court since Nuremberg
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Liberia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He launched the war that destroyed Liberia in 1989, won the presidency at the ballot box in 1997, and in 2012 became the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials.
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor was a government official under Samuel Doe who fled to the United States, was jailed pending extradition on embezzlement charges, escaped, and returned at the head of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, which crossed from Ivory Coast on Christmas Eve 1989.
The war that followed ran for most of fourteen years. He won the presidential election of July 1997 with around three quarters of the vote, campaigning on the understanding that the fighting would resume if he lost — voters chanted that he had killed their parents and they would vote for him anyway. He resigned under military and diplomatic pressure in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria.
No figure shaped modern Liberia more, and none more destructively. He is here because the record of the country cannot be told without him.
The war that followed ran for most of fourteen years. He won the presidential election of July 1997 with around three quarters of the vote, campaigning on the understanding that the fighting would resume if he lost — voters chanted that he had killed their parents and they would vote for him anyway. He resigned under military and diplomatic pressure in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria.
No figure shaped modern Liberia more, and none more destructively. He is here because the record of the country cannot be told without him.
- BBC News — Charles Taylor jailed for 50 years for war crimes
- Wikipedia — Charles Taylor (Liberian politician)
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