Ex-Liberian Warlord Behind Bars

U.N. peacekeepers escorted the captured former Liberian President Charles Taylor, in handcuffs, into jail Wednesday at the Sierra Leone tribunal where he is wanted for trial on war-crimes charges.

Taylor, manacled and looking dejected, was led behind a razor-wired gate into the holding penitentiary where nine other defendants in Sierra Leone's brutal 1989-2002 civil war are held.

Taylor, captured on the run in Nigeria Tuesday with his family and sacks full of cash, in the far northeastern border town of Gamboru, in Borno State, nearly 600 miles from the villa in southern Calabar from which he reportedly disappeared Monday night, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement. He was trying to cross the border into Cameroon. He disappeared Monday night.

Taylor was flown to the Liberian capital Wednesday and then immediately taken by U.N. helicopter to Sierra Leone, witnesses said.

Diplomats and court staff at the Sierra Leone tribunal gathered near a helipad next to the facility's prison where other defendants are held, with Chief Prosecutor Desmond de Silva confident that the former Liberian president would soon be in custody.

Taylor is wanted on 17 charges of crimes against humanity.

Taylor left from Maiduguri, capital of northwestern Borno state, where he was captured late Tuesday night trying to slip across the border into Cameroon after leaving his home in exile in southern Nigeria, a senior police official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

President George Bush said Wednesday that he appreciates the government of Nigeria's work to apprehend Charles Taylor, a warlord and rebel leader charged with crimes related to Sierra Leone's 14-year civil war.

"The fact that Charles Taylor will be brought to justice in a court of law will help Liberia and is a signal, Mr. President, of your deep desire for there to be peace in your neighborhood," Mr. Bush told Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo at a White House meeting.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, on a visit to the United States, said he feels vindicated as a result of the arrest hours earlier in his country of Africa's most renowned warlord.

"I feel vindicated," Obasanjo said as he rejected the notion that Nigerian authorities may have been complicit in the escape Tuesday of Taylor from his haven in Nigeria.

Those who spread such ideas "are wrong and owe an apology," he said.

A Nigerian police official said Taylor was in a vehicle with his son, an aide and a local guide when arrested. They also were carrying two 110-pound sacks filled with U.S. and European currency, Alhaji Mohammed Aminu Bello said.

Taylor, 57, and his son were taken into custody while the others were let go, Bello said.

Taylor disappeared just days after Nigeria, which had granted him asylum under a 2003 agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war, bowed to pressure to surrender Taylor to face justice before the tribunal.

The admission that Taylor had slipped away came just an hour before Obasanjo left Nigeria on a presidential jet headed for Washington.

Taylor's disappearance came after Nigeria resisted calls for two days from the United States, human rights organizations and the war tribunal in Sierra Leone for authorities to arrest Taylor, who escaped from a U.S. jail in Boston in 1985, to ensure he would stand trial. There was speculation of collusion by Nigerian security agents and some officials.

All 22 Nigerian police officers responsible for guarding Taylor have been arrested, the Nigerian government said Tuesday.

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. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.

While 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 U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people.

Taylor's main aim, the indictment says, was to enrich himself from Sierra Leone's rich diamond fields. In Liberia, he stole the proceeds from diamonds, timber and rubber.

The war tribunal's indictment says Taylor trained in Libya along with other African rebels who were part of a 10-year strategy by Moammar Gaddafi to get control of several African countries through surrogates.

Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But he agreed on Saturday after Liberia's new President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over for trial.

The New York Times reports that Sirleaf said in an interview with newspaper before her inauguration that Taylor's fate was a relatively low priority, given the many problems facing Liberia, but asked Nigeria to turn him over under intense political pressure from the U.S.

Taylor had lived in exile in Nigeria since being forced from power under a 2003 peace deal that ended Liberia's civil war.