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Nigeria Will Hand Over Chuck, Predicts War Crimes Prosecutor
Interview with David Crane, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations-created Special Court for Sierra Leone Are you in any discussions with the Nigerian government concerning the extradition of Charles Taylor to Sierra Leone to stand trial? What exactly is the procedure you would follow at this point given the indictment of Taylor months ago and his current sanctuary in Nigeria. What do you do now? Well, Nigeria took a very important leadership role in ensuring that peace continued in Liberia. One has to understand that when I publicly announced the indictment of Charles Taylor on the fourth of June, I said that Charles Taylor has to be removed from the equation for true peace to start in Liberia -- and actually all of West Africa. Certainly that happened on 11 August when he stepped on an airplane and went into exile to Nigeria as a disgraced war criminal. A legitimate peace process began to take place. However, because he is still at large, he is still causing problems. Charles Taylor has breached over eight peace accords and 13 ceasefires. He was using the Accra (Ghana) summit as another means by which he could hang on to political power and to manipulate events while the rebels began to move on Monrovia. So, what we're doing with Nigeria at this point is allowing the dust to settle to ensure that peace starts in Liberia. But Nigeria is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, various African and international conventions related to this type of topic including the African Convention on Human Rights, along with the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court. They state clearly that if you have a known war criminal, or someone who is suspected of being a war criminal that you should investigate or put that person on trial yourself, or turn them over to the appropriate organization. They know this; they know they have to do this and so I am allowing Nigeria to sort this out. But at the end of the day, Charles Taylor must be turned over to the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Do you have any indications that Nigeria is actually investigating Charles Taylor, doing or planning to do any of these things you've just listed? I'm not aware of them. They can certainly investigate or do what they want to do as far as the crimes that he has committed, however there are a lot of legal hurdles which they would have to face under Nigerian law. It's not necessary. It's appropriate for them to turn him over to the Court by which he has been charged with 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This is probably the more prudent way to go. Do you think Nigeria will actually do that? Yes I do, as a matter of fact. Internationally, domestically there is a great deal of support for this to happen. President Obasanjo has very little support for keeping Taylor in Nigeria. Civil society, local NGOs as well as the Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigerian Journalists Association, former commanding generals of Nigerian troops who lost their lives in Liberia back in the mid-nineties - there have been thousands of Nigerian soldiers and civilians murdered by Charles Taylor and his forces in the 1990s.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-09-29 |
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