Civil War in Liberia

Civil War in Liberia


Liberia, founded by freed American slaves, suffered years of brutal civil war both before and after Charles Taylor's election as President in 1997. Once a guerrilla trained under Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, an escapee of a Boston maximum security prison with the rumoured help of the CIA for whom he was an informant, a convicted warlord accused of fuelling civil war in Sierra Leone through weapons sales for blood diamonds, the history of Charles Taylor is both impossibly bizarre and gruesomely brutal. One of his election slogans was reported to be "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him".
By 2003 the capital Monrovia was besieged by rebel forces with bitter battles being fought across the city. Under intense regional and U.S. pressure Taylor agreed to step down in exchange for exile, leaving a weary nation to start to rebuild. However he was subsequently handed over and convicted of war crimes in 2015.
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