Liberia's Taylor Applies to Serve Jail Term in Rwanda
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has formally applied to serve the rest of his jail term for war crimes in Rwanda, saying his imprisonment in Britain breaches his human rights, his lawyer said Thursday.
Taylor was jailed for 50 years in 2012 on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity over acts committed by Sierra Leonean rebels he aided and abetted during the brutal 1991-2001 civil war.
He was the first former head of state to be jailed by an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in Germany after World War II.
A motion lodged last week by Taylor's lawyers with the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, where he was convicted, argues he should be allowed to serve his sentence closer to his family.
"International human rights law requires that prisoners be detained under conditions that preserve, to the extent reasonably possible, contact with family members, particularly children," it says.
Taylor was flown to Britain from The Hague to serve his sentence following a confidential deal made in 2007 after his arrest.
He is the only person ever sent by an international court to serve a sentence outside their own continent against their will, the motion claims.
Taylor's lawyer John Jones told the BBC: "What he has applied for is for the revocation of the sentence to be served in the UK so that he can serve his sentence in Rwanda where all the other prisoners convicted by the special court for Sierra Leone are."
Jones added: "The UK has a duty to ensure family life, not just for him but for his family. It's a clear duty under international law and English domestic law.
"If the UK is unable to make these family visits possible, no matter what he has been convicted of, he is going to serve a 50-year sentence, he has got a right to see his wife and children."
Taylor's family, which reportedly includes 15 children, has previously complained about conditions at HMP Frankland in northeast England, the maximum security prison where he is being held.
"They took him to this prison where high (-risk) criminals, terrorists and other common British criminals are kept and he is being classified as a high-risk prisoner," his wife Victoria Addison Taylor told Agence France Presse last year.
"He is going through humiliation and you cannot treat a former head of state that way."
Britain's Foreign Office said Taylor was treated in the same way as any other prisoner and the court in The Hague would decide on his application.
"In terms of him being mistreated, the answer is no. As with any other prisoner in the UK, he's being held in decent conditions," a spokesman told AFP.
"He and his family have the same conditions and visiting rights as any other UK prisoner."
Source: Agence France Presse
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