Victims of Brutal War Rejoice at Taylor Sentencing
by ANDY DRAKE and JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH Associate, abcnews.go.comNovember 30th -0001
Amputees who are still struggling to lead normal lives years after they were mutilated by the rebels backed by ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor, hailed the decision by judges at The Hague on Wednesday to sentence him to 50 years in prison.
In a landmark ruling by the Special Court on Sierra Leone last month, the 64-year-old Taylor became the first former head of state since the aftermath of World War II to be convicted. He is to spend the next half-century behind bars on 11 counts for aiding and abetting the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone, who murdered and mutilated tens of thousands of people during their country's brutal civil war which ended in 2002.
"He has done bad things to us," said 22-year-old amputee Sento Thoronka of Taylor, as she attempted to cut weeds this weekend before the verdict using only her right arm. Her left arm was hacked off by the RUF, a common terror tactic by the group, which was backed by Taylor, in return for blood diamonds.
"There is nothing someone can say to me that will ever make me forget what he did, because when I look at myself I look odd. I'll never feel fine about that," she said.
Taylor is an ex-warlord whose rebel forces invaded Liberia in 1989, marking the start of that country's vicious civil war. He eventually ran and was elected president, before being forced out by another rebel group. In Liberia, which shares a border with Sierra Leone, the irony has always been that Taylor is being tried for crimes he aided and abetted, rather than the ones that he is accused of directly carrying out in his own country.
In the Liberian capital of Monrovia, Suzanah Vaye watched the proceedings and hailed the sentence. Her husband was killed during the last days of Taylor's government in 2003. He was last seen in the hands of the ex-president's security force.
"Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that justice in one place is justice everywhere," said Vaye. "Had Taylor not been so cruel to his own people here, he would not have taken it elsewhere. Today, I join Sierra Leoneans in saying this should be a lesson to people that God has his own way of bringing judgment ... Let this be a lesson to leaders that no one is bigger than God."
But Taylor also remains popular in Liberia among his former supporters, and among his extended family.
"The sentence is outrageous," said Arthur Saye, Taylor's brother-in-law, in Monrovia. "How can you give a man fifty years for only aiding and abetting."
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Associated Press writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh contributed to this report from Monrovia, Liberia.
Original Page: http://abcnews.go.com/International/t/story/victims-brutal-war-rejoice-taylor-sentencing-16456815
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