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For other people named Charles Taylor, see Charles Taylor (disambiguation)

Charles Ghankay Taylor (born January 28, 1948) was the President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. He was born in Arthington, a city near Monrovia. His father was a Americo-Liberian, his mother was a member of the Gola tribe. Taylor was a university student in the United States from 1972-1977. He was briefly arrested in 1979 after threatening to take over the Liberian diplomatic mission in New York. He returned to Liberia in 1980.

Taylor was appointed by President Samuel Doe to run the General Services Agency but was arrested in Massachusetts when Doe accused him of embezzeling almost US$ 1 million. He remained in prison from May 1984 to September 1985 while awaiting extradition. He escaped prison and is thought to have gone to Libya.

In 1989 Taylor launched an armed uprising from the Ivory Coast. Although this led to the fall of Doe, it also led to the political fragmentation of the country into violent factionalism. In mid-1990, a faction led by Yormie Johnson split from Taylor's group and captured Monrovia for itself, depriving Taylor of outright victory.

The civil war turned into an ethnic conflict, with seven factions fighting for control of Liberia's resources (esp. iron ore, timber and rubber). Up to 200,000 people were killed and more than 1 million were forced from their homes.

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia's president following a landslide poll victory in 1997, taking 75% of the vote. Taylor's opponents have sometimes since claimed that the results of this election were not legitimate, but at the time they were judged free and fair by observers.

Taylor supported the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group in Sierra Leone during the 1990s, and has been accused of having perpetuated that war through his support for the RUF. During much of his term in office, Taylor was harshly criticised by Western governments and media, and according to one long-standing accusation, Taylor was involved in the trading of "blood diamonds."

In 1999, a rebellion against Taylor began in northern Liberia, led by a group calling itself Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). This group has been frequently accused of grave atrocities, and there is strong evidence that the group is allied with or controlled by the government of neighboring Guinea, which is in turn a regional ally of the United States.

In early 2003, as LURD was consolidating its control of northern Liberia, a second rebel group, called the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and allegedly backed by the government of the Ivory Coast, emerged in southern Liberia and achieved rapid successes. By the summer, Taylor's government controlled less than a third of Liberia.

In June of 2003 a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for the President's arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers.

The indictment was issued at Taylor's official visit to Ghana. With the backing of South African president Thabo Mbeki, against the urging of Sierra Leone president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Ghanaian police failed to arrest Taylor, who returned to Monrovia.

During his absence for the peace talks in Ghana, it is alleged that the US urged the vice-president, Moses Blah, to seize power. Upon his return, Taylor briefly dismissed Blah from his post, only to reinstate him a few days later. Meanwhile, the rebel group LURD initiated a siege of Monrovia, and several bloody battles were fought as Taylor's forces defeated rebel attempts to capture the city. The pressure on Taylor increased further as U.S. President George W. Bush stated that Taylor "must leave Liberia" twice in July 2003.

Taylor insisted that he would resign only if American peacekeeping troops were deployed to Liberia. The neighbouring nation of Nigeria also deployed dozens of troops to the country, and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo offered President Taylor safe exile in his country. On August 6, less than a dozen US Marines were deployed as a liaison with the peacekeepers.

On August 10, Charles Taylor appeared on national television in Liberia to announce that he would resign the following day and hand power to the nation's vice president, Moses Blah. He harshly criticized the United States in his farewell address, saying that the Bush adminsitration's insistence that he leave the country was a foolish policy that would hurt Liberia.

On August 11, Taylor resigned, leaving Moses Blah as his successor until a transitional government was established on October 14. At the handover were Ghanaian President John Kufuor, South African President Thabo Mbeki, and Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, representing African regional councils. The U.S. brought three warships with 2,300 Marines into view of the coast. Taylor flew to Nigeria where the Nigerian government provided houses for him and his entourage.

On December 4, Interpol issued a "red notice", suggesting that countries have the international right to arrest him. Taylor is now on Interpol's Most Wanted list, noted as possibly being dangerous, and is wanted for "crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions." However, Nigeria, which is currently holding Taylor, has stated that it will not submit to Interpol's demands, unless Liberia wants to try him; if so, Nigeria will return Taylor to Liberia for a fair trial. In November of 2003, the United States Congress passed a bill that included a reward offer of two million dollars for Taylor's capture, despite the peace agreement's guarantee of his safe exile in Nigeria.