Cross session of Liberians in Monrovia are soliciting one million signatures from their fellow compatriots for the release of their former President, Charles Taylor was sentenced to a fifty years prison termed on war crimes.
The group headed by E, Fredrick Baye said their aimed of the signatures being rally is to petition the International Court to unconditionally release from further detention of their leader who is been held in a UK jail.
Baye further told the GNN that dozens of Liberians have expressed their intention to join the campaign for the release of Mr. Charles Taylor as of August 11, 2003 up to date, August 11, 2022 has spent 19 years behind bars in the UK detention center.
Others who spoke to the GNN said they are happy to be part of the ‘Free Charles Taylor Campaign’ nothing that they will do all in their powers to solicit signatures from Liberians for his release.
The ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor has been ordered to serve the rest of his jail term in the UK, after losing a request to be transferred to Rwanda. He had argued that he was being denied his rights to a family life, because his wife and children had not been granted UK visas.
A UN-backed court convicted him of war crimes over his support for rebels who committed atrocities in Sierra Leone.
Taylor was convicted on 11 charges including terrorism, rape, murder and the use of child soldiers by rebel groups in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war, in which some 50,000 people died.
The former Liberian leader was found to have supplied weapons to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in exchange for so-called blood diamonds.
The rebels were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians to terrorise the population.
Taylor has always insisted he is innocent and that his only contact with the rebels was to urge them to stop fighting
As well as complaining about not being able to see his family, Taylor argued he was being held “effectively in isolation” because he was “too much of a target and too vulnerable” to be kept with other inmates of the Frankland prison in the northern English city of Durham.
He further said he wanted to be on the African continent, where people would share a “cultural affinity” with him.
He was found guilty at his trial of 11 crimes including terrorism, rape, murder and the use of child soldiers by rebel groups in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the vicious civil war of 1991-2002. Judge Richard Lussick said at his trial that they were “some of the most heinous crimes in human history
