Questions raised over Taylor's exile in Nigeria

While former Liberian President Charles Taylor has taken up life in exile in a serene, luxurious home overlooking a river in Nigeria's southeastern city of Calabar, the dust raised by the asylum granted the suspected war criminal is yet to settle. The United Nations-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone, which indicted Taylor on 4 June for crimes against humanity over his alleged support for a brutal rebel movement in that country, insists the charges against the former warlord will stand for life. Nigeria, the court's special prosecutor David Crane has said, is obliged under international law to hand him over to the court's custody. International human rights groups have also stepped up their campaign to have Taylor tried for his alleged crimes. Both New York-based Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International are mounting pressure on Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo to hand Taylor over to the court in Sierra Leone. "The UN Security Council has called on all states to cooperate with the Sierra Leone Special Court," said Rory Mungoven, the global advocacy director of HRW said in a recent statement. "Nigeria must not reject the Security Council's request by harbouring an indicted war criminal." Amnesty International argues that Nigeria being a signatory to the Rome Statute setting up the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other pertinent international treaties is bound to give up Taylor for trial. "The Nigerian government must arrest Charles Taylor and either surrender him to the Special Court or open an investigation with a view to determining whether to open criminal or extradition proceedings in Nigerian courts," Amnesty International said. In Nigeria there has been a raging debate over the merits and demerits of having Taylor in the country. Obasanjo's government has been the butt of criticisms by local human rights groups and Nigerians upset by the decision to provide shelter for a wanted man. The umbrella journalists union in Nigeria has taken the extra step of mounting a legal challenge to Taylor's asylum in court. Among the demands of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) is that Taylor be tried for the murder of two Nigerian journalists he admitted was the responsibility of his then rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia in the early 1990s while he was leading an insurrection against the government of late Samuel Doe. In addition the union wants Taylor extradited to Sierra Leone to face war crime charges. "Apart from the fact that he killed two Nigerian journalists, he was indicted for war crimes and Nigeria can't afford to go against the position of the UN," Smart Adeyemi, president of the NUJ, told IRIN. "You don't harbour a murderer in your house, it's against the Nigerian constitution," he added. Yet Nigeria has remained adamant it will not give up the man who presided over the past 14 years of almost incessant conflict in Liberia and was accused of exporting instability across the West Africa. Right from the time Obasanjo made his early July trip to Monrovia to make the asylum offer to Taylor, he had stressed it was a necessary step to end the bloodbath in Africa's oldest republic and would brook no pressures to hand him in. His foreign minister Oluyemi Adeniji, a former UN diplomat, has since Taylor's arrival restated the government position more bluntly. "Nigeria will not be harassed by anybody about the indictment, and that is final," Adeniji told reporters in Abuja last week. "You give somebody asylum on humanitarian grounds in order to save the Liberian people from fighting, in order to save the peace process... and three days later you hand him over to somebody else? That is not what a sovereign country would do," he said. Adeniji said Nigeria was unlikely to come under such pressures from the United States as some commentators had suggested because the world's only superpower understood why political refuge was given Taylor. Nigerian foreign ministry officials say privately the need to take in Taylor formed part of the discussions between Obasanjo and President George Bush during the Nigerian stop of his African visit. Leaked official documents on Taylor indicate he has been given very stringent conditions for his stay in Nigeria to ensure he does not continue to foment trouble at home from his exile. Not only is Taylor required to travel out of Calabar only with the permission of his hosts, he is also barred from commenting on Liberian affairs and can only grant interviews with the permission of the Nigerian government. Neither the former Liberian president nor members of his family will enjoy any immunities or special privileges while in Nigeria. In particular no form of arms or ammunition must be found in his possession or that of any member of his entourage. Taylor is also expected to meet all his expenses. Despite the apparent domestication of the former warlord by Nigeria for the benefit of Liberia, Obasanjo's critics question his motives. Tajudeen Abdulraheem, who heads the London-based rights group, Justice Africa, believes Obasanjo is working in cahoots with United States to undermine the ICC, where the Bush administration does not want United States citizens tried. Abdulraheem recalled that Obasanjo had on two occasions in the past four years ordered troops into action in conflict areas in Nigeria where they committed atrocities against unarmed civilians for which no one has been brought to account. In each case, in the ethnic Ijaw town of Odi in the southern Niger Delta in 1999 and in Tiv town of Zaki Biam in central Nigeria in 2001, hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred by troops. Abdulraheem alleged Obasanjo's decision to sign an immunity pact over ICC trials with the United States may have been done in the hope that allegations of crimes against humanity against him may also be overlooked. Nigerian senator and leading Obasanjo critic, Joseph Waku, who is also a Tiv, amplifies this view. "I can't see Obasanjo handing over Charles Taylor for trial because he himself is awaiting trial over the Tiv genocide," he told reporters recently. However, Bola Akinterinwa, a professor and researcher at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, believes the priority for the government was ending the bloody conflict in Liberia and preventing it from infecting the rest of the West Africa region. "There is wisdom in overlooking the atrocities of Taylor by giving him Nigerian hospitality and putting a stop to the carnage in Liberia," Akinterinwa said in a recent newspaper article. "It is important to distinguish between the need to ensure regional peace and the need to punish Taylor for his roles in regional instability. The purpose of the asylum, which is to ensure restoration of peace, its maintenance and sustenance, is the priority," he said.