The London-based British criminal court, commonly known as Old Bailey, decided on Friday (December 6th) to drop charges against Agnes Reeves Taylor, ex-wife of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. She has always denied torture charges during the country's civil war, which lasted throughout the 1990s.
According to the judge's decision, the crimes charged pre-dated the law allowing them to be tried. The prosecution has indicated that it will not appeal this decision.
At age 54, she appeared via videoconference from Bronzefield Prison, near London, wearing a green sweater and a pearl necklace. Arrested in 2017, she was accused of being involved in torture against several people, including children.
She was also suspected of encouraging the forces of Charles Taylor, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), to use rape of women as a means of torture.
An application for an indefinite residence permit in the United Kingdom
A former lecturer at Coventry English University, Agnes Reeves Taylor lives in Dagenham, East London. She left her West African country in 1992 and divorced her husband Charles in 1996.
The rebel leader then became president of Liberia between 1997 and 2003. He was sentenced by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) in 2012 to 50 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in that country. neighboring country of Liberia. He is serving his fifty-year sentence in a British prison.
In 2013, Agnes Taylor applied for an indefinite residence permit in the United Kingdom, which was rejected in 2016 because of suspicions of war crimes. An immigration judge will now have to look into his case.
The civil war in Liberia, one of the most atrocious conflicts on the African continent, killed some 250,000 people between 1989 and 2003. It was marked by massacres committed by drug-addicted fighters, mutilations, acts of cannibalism and forced recruitment of child soldiers.
With AFP