Nigeria will transfer Charles Taylor to Liberia

Nigeria will transfer former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is living in exile in Nigeria and has been indicted for war crimes, to Liberian custody, the Nigerian government said yesterday.

The former warlord is seen as the mastermind behind once intertwined civil wars in Liberia and neighbouring Sierra Leone, where a special UN-backed court wants to try him for supporting brutal rebels in exchange for diamonds.

"President Olusegun Obasanjo has today... informed President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that the government of Liberia is free to take former President Charles Taylor into its custody," the Nigerian government said in a statement.

Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia's first post-war president who took office in January, had asked Nigeria to consider handing over Taylor so he could stand trial at the Sierra Leone court.

Johnson-Sirleaf arrived home yesterday from the United States but made no public comment. A government official said there was no indication yet of when Taylor might be transferred.

Taylor's spokesman in Nigeria said African leaders who brokered the 2003 deal under which Taylor stepped down and went into exile had agreed he could not be handed over to the court.

"African leaders cannot afford to renege on that agreement. They cannot afford to give Western governments a carte blanche to terminate African governments," Sylvester Paasewe said.