An Empty Chair at The Hague: Trying Charles Taylor Commentary
An Empty Chair at The Hague: Trying Charles Taylor
Edited by: Jeremiah Lee

JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law, former Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, says that despite the absence of former Liberian president and indicted war criminal Charles Taylor from the opening of his trial before an SCSL panel sitting at an ICC courtroom in The Hague, the trial itself demonstrates to the people of Sierra Leone that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun…

The video transmission from The Hague showed a courtroom in the International Criminal Court. There sat the Prosecutor and his team from Freetown, Sierra Leone, as well as the Defense team consisting of appointed counsel and a barrister from the Office of the Public Defender. The judges had yet to come in to start the trial of the first African head of state for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But his chair remained empty.

I indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia on March 3, 2003 at a moving signing ceremony in my office in Freetown. Taylor was indictment number one of eight that I signed that fateful afternoon. A week later six indictees would be in jail, all the various leaders of the warring factions in the brutal conflict in Sierra Leone, started by Taylor with the support of Blasé Campore and Muammar Khadafy of Libya. The indictment of Taylor that I signed contained seventeen counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging from murder, rape, pillage, enslavement, mutilation, and the unlawful recruitment of child soldiers, among others. That indictment was later amended down to eleven counts, making for a tighter, more concise instrument to hold this destroyer of two nations accountable.

The conflict in Sierra Leone was started by criminals for their own personal criminal gain and to geo-politically take over all of West Africa. Diamonds, gold, and timber were sold for cash and guns to fuel the effort. The vast majority of the profits were pocketed by Taylor and his band of thugs in the amount of several hundred million dollars. The center point to a vast joint criminal enterprise, Taylor controlled this operation to take over Liberia and Sierra Leone for over ten years. The result of this misadventure was the murder, rape, maiming, and mutilation of over 1.2 million human beings in West Africa making him one of the mega-murderers of the 20th century behind Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein. Including Taylor, this small and sordid gang of despots is responsible for the destruction of over 100 million of their own citizens.

So what of the empty chair this past Monday, 4 June, four years to the day that I unsealed the indictment publicly humiliating him before his peers and the people of Africa in Accra, Ghana? Not much should be taken from it. Taylor and his counsel are predictably providing the histrionics that accompany the public disgrace of a bloody tyrant. Goering and Hess at Nuremberg, Milosevic in The Hague, Norman in Freetown, and Hussein in Baghdad all acted up at the beginning of their trials, in large part to no avail. Taylor’s antics are no different and cannot prevent the proper and forceful march of justice in a fair and open trial.

The tactic to deflect the power of an opening statement of the Chief Prosecutor of a high level indictee is also a test of the trial chamber to ensure that there is proper control throughout the proceedings. A hesitant and insecure bench will turn the trial into a disaster and bring discredit upon both the judiciary and the rule of law. Not so at The Hague last Monday. The presiding judge quite properly, and with great patience, managed the fumbling efforts of the defense counsel to derail the opening and shift the spotlight from the war crimes and crimes against humanity Taylor allegedly committed to Taylor’s political perspectives and his contempt for the proceedings. Very much like Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, the presiding judge at Nuremberg, the presiding judge here firmly reigned in all court personnel sending the signal that the trial chamber was in control.

And so it begins – one of the major international criminal trials of the decade – in an orderly and proper fashion, showing the people of West Africa that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun. As the trial unfolds, the brave men and women of Sierra Leone will come forward, some damaged physically and emotionally, almost beyond understanding, holding up the stumps of their limbs and saying to Taylor, “you did this to me.” The chair may have been empty on 4 June 2007, but the hearts of the countless victims of the atrocity perpetrated in West Africa are full with the grace and hope that no man is above the law.

David M. Crane is a professor at Syracuse University College of Law, and former founding Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone (2002-2005).


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