Liberian ex-president must serve out sentence in Britain – court

AMSTERDAM, (Reuters) – Former Liberian President Charles Taylor must spend the rest of his life in a British jail after judges at an international court in The Hague denied his request to serve out his 50-year prison sentence in Rwanda.

Taylor, 67, was convicted in 2012 of aiding and abetting the murderous militias that raped, mutilated and murdered their way across Sierra Leone during its civil war, becoming the first head of state to be sentenced by an international court since World War Two.

His lawyers had argued that detaining him far from home, where his wife Victoria needed a difficult-to-obtain visa to visit him at great cost, amounted to a denial of his right to a family life and thus an infringement of his human rights.

“The motion is denied in its entirety,” the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone said in a ruling filed on January 30 but only made public yesterday.