A UN-backed appeals court docket has upheld Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor’s 50-year sentence for arming rebels throughout Sierra Leone’s brutal 1990s civil conflict.
”The appeals chamber… affirms the sentence of 50 years in jail and orders that the sentence be imposed instantly,” choose George King advised the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on Thursday.
Taylor, 65, was discovered responsible in 2012 of supporting rebels from neighbouring Sierra Leone who waged a marketing campaign of terror throughout a civil conflict that claimed 120,000 lives between 1991 and 2002, in alternate for ”blood diamonds” mined by slave labour.
His historic sentence on 11 counts of conflict crimes and crimes towards humanity was the primary handed down by a global court docket towards a former head of state because the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.
”The Appeals Chamber is of the opinion that the sentence imposed by the trial chamber is honest within the mild of the totality of the crimes dedicated,” by Taylor, the Sierra Leonean choose stated as Taylor listened with out emotion.
Judge King stated Taylor’s attorneys ”didn't exhibit any errors within the Trial Chamber’s reasoning.”
The former west African strongman is to start out his sentence instantly, likely in a British jail.