Former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor has been arrested, Nigerian police said yesterday.
Taylor, wanted by an international tribunal to stand trial for crimes against humanity, went missing on Monday night and was caught at Nigeria's southern border with Cameroon, national police spokesman Haz Iwendi said.
The former Liberian president, accused of fomenting two savage wars, seems set to become the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.
Nigeria, which had granted asylum to the fast-talking, US-educated economist under a 2003 agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war, said on Tuesday that Taylor had disappeared a day earlier. The admission came three days after Nigeria -- under pressure from Washington and others -- reluctantly bowed to pressure to surrender Taylor to face justice.
The statement was released an hour before Obasanjo left Nigeria on a presidential jet headed for Washington, where he was scheduled to meet US President George W. Bush yesterday.
Nigeria had announced it would hand Taylor over to a UN-backed Sierra Leone tribunal to be tried for alleged war crimes related to Sierra Leone's 1991-2001 civil war, but the government had made no moves to arrest him.
Taylor, a one-time warlord and rebel leader, is charged with backing Sierra Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off body parts.
Although the Sierra Leone tribunal's charges refer only to the war there, Taylor also has been accused of starting civil war in Liberia and of harboring al-Qaeda suicide bombers who attacked the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people.
Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But on Saturday, after Liberia's new President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over for trial, Obasanjo agreed.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
RSS