[Mail and Globe] Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, on Monday denied that he had ever eaten human flesh or ordered his fighters to do so as he answered allegations of cannibalism at his war-crimes trial. "It is sickening. You must be sick to believe it," the one-time warlord testified in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, sitting in The Hague. "It makes you feel like throwing up."I wonder if Prince Johnson would have the same opinion about his treatment of Samuel Doe? But that's on videotape, so maybe not.
Taylor (61) said he could not dispute that there were cannibals in certain parts of Liberia, but claims that he was among them were "total nonsense".
"Tut tut, my good man! Me? Eat a political enemy? Pshaw!"
A witness had testified at the trial that he ate human flesh with Taylor at a gathering of a secret society, Poro. "It never happened," the ex-president retorted, adding: "I never ordered any combatant to eat anyone."
Some witnesses have told the court that combatants of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia had committed cannibalism to instil fear in civilians in the West African nation.
The former leader and warlord took the stand in his own defence on July 14, dismissing as "lies" charges of murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers, enslavement and pillaging against him.
Much of the documentation for those acts is also on videotape and one or two have pictures that have appeared on Rantburg.
He has been on trial since January 2008 on 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the brutal 1991 to 2001 civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone, whose rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) he is accused of arming in exchange for so-called "blood diamonds".
Too bad. I used to love his sneakers...