AP Features, January 26th, 2007
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor will not be ready for the start of his trial in June on charges of overseeing a campaign of terror, murder, mutilation, rape and enslavement in West Africa, his lawyer told a judge Friday.
Judge Teresa Doherty made it clear she did not plan to change the trial's June 4 start date, though it is possible defense attorneys could appeal.
The trial is expected to take a year to 18 months, prosecutor Stephen Rapp said.
Taylor has pleaded innocent to 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity linked to the killing and mistreatment of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's bloody 10-year civil war. He faces a life sentence if convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
The indictment "covers the gamut of the most horrendous things humans can do to one another," Rapp told reporters after the hearing.
Taylor's lawyer, Karim Khan, said during Friday's 80-minute hearing that he would work toward the start date, but said, "we will not be ready" given the huge amount of prosecution evidence he has to study.
Taylor did not appear in the courtroom in The Hague provided by the International Criminal Court because he was suffering from a bad back, Rapp said after the hearing.
"He is getting appropriate medical care for his condition, which certainly is not life-threatening," Rapp told reporters.
He also said that Taylor's defense team may appeal the trial's start date, but that he expected the trial to go ahead June 4.
Khan also protested that prosecutors were not allowing him to distribute electronic copies of evidence to his client or other defense lawyers in Africa and requested that they release details of expert witnesses they plan to call in the case.
Rapp said prosecutors fear that giving electronic versions of their evidence could allow confidential details to leak into the public.
Doherty ordered prosecutors to disclose details of their expert witnesses "as early as possible" but did not order any change in the way they shared information.
She also ordered prosecutors to provide a document outlining their case by April 4. Prosecutors expect to call more than 100 witnesses, Rapp said.
Taylor was flown to the Netherlands in June last year amid fears that staging his trial in Sierra Leone, where the Special Court usually sits, could trigger fresh unrest in the war-scarred African nation.
Taylor's defense team had asked for the trial to start in September, saying it was unlikely to be ready before then because of the case's complexity, the amount of evidence turned over by prosecutors and lack of facilities for defense attorneys in The Hague.
The charges against Taylor stem from his alleged backing of Sierra Leonean rebels, who mutilated, raped and enslaved their victims.
The rebels also looted and torched homes, according to Taylor's indictment, which covers crimes allegedly committed between November, 1996 and January, 2002.
"The primary objective of the attacks was to terrorize the civilian population of Sierra Leone," prosecutors say in a summary of the allegations. "Many civilians saw these crimes committed; others returned to their homes or places of refuge to find the results of these crimes _ dead bodies, savaged or mutilated victims and looted and burned property."
Taylor also launched a Liberian insurgency in 1989 and won elections that handed him the presidency in 1997. Rebels took up arms against him three years later, and he fled to Nigeria in 2003 at the end of Liberia's 14-year civil war.
In March last year, he was captured as he attempted to slip out of Nigeria after the country agreed to hand him over to authorities seeking his prosecution.
