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Chuck wants new Brunomalis and Alan Dershowitz for defense.
Taylor hunts for defence lawyers Reuters Freetown, Sierra Leone: Former Liberian leader Charles Taylor is hunting for lawyers to defend him after pleading not guilty to war crimes at a UN-backed court in Sierra Leone, his advisors say. Africa's most feared warlord pleaded innocent on Monday to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role backing rebels who raped and mutilated civilians and recruited child soldiers during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. From his heavily-guarded cell in the Special Court compound, nestled among the shanty-covered hills of the capital Freetown, Taylor has been receiving legal advisors from around the region but has yet to decide who should defend him, lawyers said. "We were able to see him and give him our advice. He will consider it and act on it but he has not yet chosen his own defence team," said Azanne Kofi Akainyah, a lawyer from Ghana who came to Freetown at Taylor's request and met him on Monday. "He was resolute, not downhearted, fully aware of the political machinations behind everything," Akainyah said late on Monday. Taylor's aides have said he would like Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz to lead his defence. Taylor was defended at Monday's hearing by a staff lawyer from the tribunal, Vincent Nmehielle, who told the court the former Liberian leader did not currently have sufficient funds to employ his own defence team. "Mr Taylor has made it clear that he has no money," Nmehielle said after the hearing. "But he has not hidden the fact that if he is able to raise the necessary money, he would love to defend himself with a legal team of his choice." The former warlord was flown, handcuffed and surrounded by UN peacekeepers, to the Freetown tribunal last Wednesday, after nearly three years in exile in Nigeria. He was arrested trying to leave Nigeria in a car with a trunk full of banknotes. The UN-backed court has asked The Netherlands to hold his trial in The Hague, citing fears keeping him in Sierra Leone could provoke unrest there and in neighbouring Liberia, where some of his supporters have threatened violence if he is judged. Taylor told the court he did not recognise its right to try him, an appeal based on his status as a head of state at the time the indictment was served, which has already been dismissed once by the tribunal in 2004. "This is just a sort of pathetic attempt to reassert this head of state immunity that has already been rejected," the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Desmond de Silva, said after the hearing. "He does not have head of state immunity any more than Milosevic did," he said. The prosecution now has 30 days to present the defence with the evidence on which it relies before Taylor's legal team prepares its case, a process expected to take several months. Posted by: Besoeker 2006-04-05 |
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