Charles Taylor (Liberian politician)

Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born 28 January 1948) is a Liberian former politician and convicted war criminal who served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003 as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure.

Born in Arthington, Montserrado County, Liberia, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in the United States before returning to Liberia to work in the government of Samuel Doe.

Taylor was born in Arthington, a town near the capital of Monrovia, Liberia, on 28 January 1948, to Nelson and Yassa Zoe (Louise) Taylor.

He attended The Newman School in his early years.

He took the name "Ghankay" later on, possibly to please and gain favor with indigenous Liberians.

His mother was a member of the Gola ethnic group, part of the 95% of the people who are indigenous to Liberia.

According to most reports, his father was an Americo-Liberian who worked as a teacher, sharecropper, lawyer and judge.

In 1977, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States.

Taylor supported the 1980 Liberian coup d'état led by Samuel Doe, which resulted in the murder of President William Tolbert and seizure of power by Doe, who established the People's Redemption Council.

Taylor was appointed to the position of Director General of the General Services Agency (GSA), a position that left him in charge of purchasing for the Liberian government.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed that Taylor first started working with US intelligence in the 1980s but refused to give details of his role or US actions, citing national security.

Taylor escaped the United States without issue.

He was fired in May 1983 for embezzling an estimated $1,000,000 (~$ in ) and sending the funds to another bank account.

Taylor fled to the United States but was arrested on 21 May 1984 by two US Deputy Marshals in Somerville, Massachusetts, on a warrant for extradition to face charges of embezzling $1 million (~$ in ) of government funds while he was the GSA boss.

Taylor fought extradition with the help of a legal team led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

His lawyers' primary arguments before US District Magistrate Robert J. DeGiacomo stated that his alleged acts of lawbreaking in Liberia were political rather than criminal in nature and that the extradition treaty between the two republics had lapsed.

Assistant United States Attorney Richard G. Stearns argued that Liberia wished to charge Taylor with theft in office, rather than with political crimes.

Stearns' arguments were reinforced by Liberian Justice Minister Jenkins Scott, who flew to the United States to testify at the proceedings.

Taylor was detained in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.

On 15 September 1985, Taylor and four other inmates escaped from the jail.

Two days later, The Boston Globe reported that they sawed through a bar covering a window in a dormitory room, after which they lowered themselves 20 ft on knotted sheets and escaped into nearby woods by climbing a fence.

Shortly thereafter, Taylor and two other escapees were met at nearby Jordan Hospital by Taylor's wife, Enid, and Taylor's sister-in-law, Lucia Holmes Toweh.

They drove a getaway car to Staten Island in New York, where Taylor disappeared.

All four of Taylor's fellow escapees, as well as Enid and Toweh, were later apprehended.

After being removed for embezzlement and imprisoned by President Doe, Taylor escaped prison in 1989.

He eventually arrived in Libya, where he was trained as a guerrilla fighter.

He returned to Liberia in 1989 as the head of a Libyan-backed rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, to overthrow the Doe government, initiating the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996).

Following Doe's execution, Taylor gained control of a large portion of the country and became one of the most prominent warlords in Africa.

During his term of office, Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002).

Following a peace deal that ended the war, Taylor was elected president in the 1997 general election.

Domestically, opposition to his government grew, culminating in the outbreak of the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003).

By 2003, Taylor had lost control of much of the countryside and was formally indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

That year, he resigned, as a result of growing international pressure; he went into exile in Nigeria.

In 2006, the newly elected President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, formally requested his extradition.

He was detained by UN authorities in Sierra Leone and then at the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden in The Hague, awaiting trial by the Special Court.

In July 2009, Taylor claimed at his trial that US CIA agents had helped him escape from the maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.

This was during his trial by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague.

He was found guilty in April 2012 of all eleven charges levied by the Special Court, including terror, murder and rape.

In May 2012, Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Reading the sentencing statement, Presiding Judge Richard Lussick said: "The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history."