African Warlord Moves to Durham

The African warlord has been convicted of plotting and aiding brutal war crimes in the Sierra Leone civil war. He has now been transferred to HMP Frankland, a high-security prison here in the North East.

Not the one on Old Elvet (phew).

Liberian president Charles Taylor is the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes by an international court since the Nuremburg trials.

Taylor had supported Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels by selling diamonds on their behalf as well as supplying them with weapons and fighters. This is a group notorious for disfiguring members of the civilian population by cutting off their hands and legs.

Taylor in his rebel days, 1989.

Taylor has been moved from the Hague, where he had stayed since the start of his trial in 2007, to HMP Frankland in Durham to serve the rest of his sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His wife has complained he is being kept with “common British prisoners” and said “You cannot treat a former head of state that way.”

The 65-year-old lost his appeal in September for abetting war crimes in a conflict which claimed 120,000 lives.

It was found that Taylor had been secretly urging the rebels not to disarm and to continue the attacks whilst claiming to be involved in peace talks.

The verdict in 2012 found him guilty of 11 counts of war crimes as well as supplying “blood diamonds.”

The supermodel said she received “dirty looking stones.”

Naomi Campbell attended the trial. She told the court she received “dirty-looking stones” from Charles Taylor in September 1997, after both attended a charity dinner held by President Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Taylor’s family have alleged he is being ill-treated at Frankland prison. However the Ministry of Justice has dismissed these claims as “total nonsense.”