Charles Taylor claims US government helped him escape from prison

Link from Boston Globe re Charles Taylor's testimony at The Hague.



I remember this prison break because it happened right down the road from my house. The other three convicts were quickly apprehended, but Taylor disappeared until he turned up in Liberia and took over the government.



edit subject line for accuracy

Liberian President Charles Taylor, a business partner of TV preacher Pat Robertson, helped fund al-Qaeda terrorists by giving them safe harbor in his country during a diamond-buying spree, investigators in Europe have charged.

Investigators looking into a connection between al-Qaeda and Taylor determined that terrorists were active in the region for at least two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. Investigators charged that three highly placed al-Qaeda operatives, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, moved about in Liberia and nearby Burkina Faso, buying diamonds that were later used to fund terrorist activities. The trio was later joined by other a-Qaeda terrorists, who moved in and out of Liberia at will.

The Washington Post reported that the investigators believe that Taylor, Liberia's dictator, received a $1 million payoff for harboring the terrorists. Al-- Qaeda operatives apparently began smuggling diamonds in the region after the U.S. government froze the group's American assets in September of 1998, following the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Key al-Qaeda terrorists stepped up their activity in Liberia just before the Sept. 11 attacks. In July of 2001, an al-- Qaeda leader flew to Burkina Faso with $1 million that was eventually turned over to Taylor. According to the report from European investigators, the money was to pay Taylor "to hide the two al-- Qaeda operatives in Camp Gbatala," a military facility near a farm Taylor owns.

Robertson has been in business with Taylor since 1999, when he formed a company called Freedom Gold Limited. The company, although chartered in the Cayman Islands, operates out of Robertson's Virginia Beach headquarters. Robertson's agreement with Taylor gives Freedom Gold the right to mine for gold in southeastern Liberia. If any gold is found, Taylor's government will pocket royalty fees.

Taylor, considered one of the most brutal dictators in the world, is an international pariah who has been accused of looting the impoverished west African nation for personal gain. Last year, he appeared at a "Liberia for Jesus" rally in the nation's capital of Monrovia, where he proclaimed that the country was under the rule of Jesus Christ. The event, which Robertson helped organize, received coverage on the televangelist's Christian Broadcasting Network.

Robertson has also tried, without success, to convince the U.S. government to ally with Taylor. He lobbied the State Department to lift its ban on Taylor and allow him to visit the United States and in June of 2002 went so far as to write to Secretary of State Colin Powell, demanding to know why the United States has not backed Taylor in his struggle against an armed opposition movement called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy..............

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200302/ai_n9191049/



Pat Robertson: Money and Morals

By Stephen Van Eck

Stephen Van Eck is a writer and publisher with Wet Water Publications in Rushville, Pennsylvania. The following is reprinted from the Dec. to Jan. 2001 issue of Freethought Perspective with special permission of the author.

Pat Robertson has a long history of cozying up to Third World dictators. This tendency first earned a lot of attention in the mid-90s, when his dealings with the bloody kleptocrat Mobutu of Zaire became known.

Robertson, loyal to a friend, criticized the State Department on the “700 Club” for refusing to allow Mobutu into the country. What the dictator would be doing here is unknown; being detained for an international tribunal might have been a good idea. Robertson also lobbied Congress to modify sanctions against the Mobutu regime, as if we were somehow being unfair to one of the worst rulers in African history.

To judge by Robertson’s attitude, Mobutu was not a bad guy at all. Robertson may actually have believed this nonsense. But his real interest involved the African Development Corporation, his for-profit multi-venture in Zaire that ultimately concentrated on a diamond mining operation. The enterprise failed, but not before a little problem surfaced regarding Robertson’s use of planes from his nonprofit “Operation Blessing” charity used almost exclusively for transporting equipment and supplies for the mining operation.

When it appeared that the beleaguered (and terminal) Mobutu was losing a protracted struggle with rebels, Robertson tried to get in good with rebel leader Laurent Kabila, a former Maoist whose faction was known to kidnap Americans. Kabila, however, would not be enticed by someone who had been cozy with his enemy.

Around this time, Robertson had struck up a relationship with Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Taylor instigated a bloody civil war that lasted seven years and reduced his country to chaos and devastation, and pointlessly financed rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone who have done the same thing there. Robertson, it should come as no surprise, has invested in a gold mining operation in Liberia.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/aah/vaneck_10_4.htm





His trial at the Hague is being covered everyday by international TV stations in Europe including CNN international and the BBC.

I had no idea just how *much* of a piece of work... Wow. Thanks for posting that.

And proof of the connections. Never-mind the CIA not knowing what this war criminal was about
before hand with the reporting of a NPR reporter.

I actually like the new system because it reveals so much about the 'new DU"

This thread was at 11 and is now at 9

I'm glad Janet posted about Charles Taylor, but I have to confess :blush: I didn't know who he was before reading the OP, much less that there was a Pat Buchanan connection.

Yeah, I know what you mean about how revealing the unrec feature can be...

During Taylor's Brutal Rule, US Watched, Waited




Taylor is a con man and it's hard to believe that he was able to round up troops, train them in Libya, and oust Samuel Doe without lots of help from the outside.



Who's fooling who?

Blood diamonds and the powers that surround it and support it. He didn't fool Africans but obviously the State Department
under both Clinton and Bush got so called 'fooled'. I don't buy it. The hearings are interesting because they are in English.
Its not like the CIA didn't know what the fuck he was about!!!

Liberia's Charles Taylor Defends Himself. He's Got The Ego For It



By Jennifer Ludden

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has taken the stand in the first trial in which a former African ruler is facing allegations of war crimes. "I am not guilty of all these charges, not even a minute part of these charges," he told the court. "This whole case is a case of deceit, deception and lies."

As someone who covered Taylor and Liberia for NPR in the mid-90's, I'm just wondering if the judges in the Hague can keep a straight face.

I remember that was my biggest difficulty when I interviewed Taylor in his spartan office in Monrovia's executive mansion. Let's just say the man does not lack ego! Taylor had instigated a seven-year-long civil war notorious for some of the worst atrocities on a cruel continent, including mutilations carried out by drugged child soldiers. He then managed to get himself elected president on a platform of peace. That was a hard one to explain to our listeners. It was essentially a strategy of intimidation, and the quote I remember voters telling me over and over was, "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, I'm voting for Charles Taylor."

It was a bit strange, then, when we sat face-to-face for an interview and he sprinkled his answers with references to America's founding fathers, implicitly linking himself to them. We journos are trained to keep a poker face, but I'll never forget how hard it was that time to keep eyebrows down, jaw intact. I looked up a profile I did of him for Morning Edition in 1997, and found this quote -- by Charles Taylor:

"Charles Taylor is not someone that you can ignore in this country, in this region, on this continent, and the planet Earth."
Shortly after his election, after I'd been in Liberia reporting for about a week, my driver turned to me in all sincerity. "So," he asked, "how do you think things will be for us under President Taylor?"

I tried so hard to make him feel better without lying, but that night in my hotel room was about the closest I ever came to a nervous breakdown............



http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/07/_charles_taylor_is_accused.html?ft=1&f=103943429