Charles Taylor arrives in The Hague for war crimes trial

Den Haag, Netherlands -Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has arrived in The Hague to face 11 charges of war crimes regarding his role in the civil war in Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia.

Taylor is being held in the same detention center that held the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. A spokesman for the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone said Taylor's trial is unlikely to begin before 2007, because of the need to review some 32 000 pages of evidence.

The combined, interlocked civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone killed an estimated 400 000 people total and left another 2.5 million homeless.

Between 1990 and 1997, Taylor's troops held the 240-square-mile (62 000 ha) Bridgestone/Firestone natural rubber plantation near Harbel, Liberia, shutting down its operations and turning its 6000 workers into refugees.

From Rubber & Plastics News (A Crain publication)