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Taylor says prosecutors paid witnesses
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Convicted Liberian warlord Charles Taylor
The former President-for-Life of Liberia, of whom the best that could be said was that he wasn't quite as horrible as Prince Johnson, at least not usually.
has accused UN prosecutors of paying witnesses to testify against him as he addressed a war crimes court in The Hague.

Taylor, 64, was found guilty by the UN-backed court last month for aiding and abetting war crimes.

"Witnesses were paid, coerced and in many cases threatened with prosecution if they did not give statements," the former Liberian president told the Special Court for Sierra Leone at a hearing ahead of his sentencing on May 30.

Dressed in a light grey suit, white shirt and blue tie, Taylor addressed the court for 30 minutes from the witness box -- his last chance to state his case before judges pronounce a sentence, expected to be delivered in two weeks' time.

Mr Taylor insisted that he "pushed hard for peace" in the neighbouring country. "I was convinced that unless peace came to Sierra Leone, Liberia could not go forward."

And he expressed his "sadness and deepest sympathies at the crimes suffered by victims and their families in Sierra Leone."

Once one of the most powerful men in west Africa, Taylor was found guilty last month of arming and aiding rebels who killed and mutilated thousands of people in Sierra Leone during a decade-long civil war that killed 120,000.

Posted by: Fred 2012-05-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=344825