Liberia's Taylor to Claim He Was Working for Peace

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2008 file photo former Liberian President Charles Taylor is seen in court as...

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2008 file photo former Liberian President Charles Taylor is seen in court as his trial reopened at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, Netherlands. Prosecution witnesses accused former Liberian President Charles Taylor of atrocities ranging from cannibalism to commanding Sierra Leone rebels who hacked of villagers' limbs and selling weapons and ammunition in exchange for so-called blood diamonds. Now it's time for Taylor to give his version of events at his trial before the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. (AP Photo/Michael Kooren, Pool, File)

(AP)

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor will take the stand to assert that he was trying to bring peace to Sierra Leone with his actions during a savage civil war that left hundreds of thousands dead or mutilated, his attorney said Monday.

The first African head of state to be tried by an international court is charged with 11 counts of murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers and spreading terror. Prosecutors at the U.N.-backed court say he backed Sierra Leone rebels to help gain control of the neighboring country and strip it of its vast mineral wealth.

Some of the 91 witnesses called so far have claimed Taylor shipped weapons to rebels in rice sacks in contravention of an arms embargo and in return got so-called "blood diamonds" mined by slave labor.

Taylor, 61, has pleaded innocent. His attorney Courtenay Griffiths said that on Tuesday the former leader would begin what are expected to be several weeks of testimony at the Special Court for Sierra Leone because he wanted to set the record straight.

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Griffiths said Taylor will testify about his "strenuous efforts to bring peace in Sierra Leone."

He urged the judges to give Taylor a fair hearing, and not to be overwhelmed by the parade of misery presented by the prosecution since the trial opened 18 months ago.

One prosecution witness took the stand with stumps where his hands had been hacked off. A woman testified that she was forced to carry a sack full of severed heads including those of her children. One of Taylor's former aides told judges he was with Taylor when the president ate a human liver.

"No one who has seen the procession through this courtroom of hurt human beings reliving the most grotesque trauma would have been unmoved," Griffiths, who is from Britain, told the three-judge panel. "We are human too, even while we declare this accused man to be not guilty of the charges he faces."

His trial has been hailed as a groundbreaking example of making an autocrat face responsibility for the human rights violations that occurred on his watch.