Nigeria Won’t Turn Taylor Over to Interpol
Interpol issued a wanted notice Thursday for ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor, but Nigeria, where he lives in exile, said it would not be pressured into handing him over.
The notice, posted on Interpol’s Web site and distributed to the international police organization’s 181 member nations, said the former warlord was being sought for “crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.”
In Nigeria, spokeswoman Remi Oyo said President Olusegun Obasanjo “has explained that he will not allow Nigeria to be intimidated” into surrendering Taylor to the U.N.-backed war crimes court for Sierra Leone, which requested the action.
“As far as we’re concerned, this is not an Interpol affair, it is a political affair,” Oyo said.
Obasanjo has said that if Liberia wanted to try Taylor, he would ask him to go back.
Otherwise, Oyo said, the Nigerian leader would keep his promise to safeguard Taylor “in the interests of peace and security in Liberia.”
Taylor fled Liberia in August under international pressure as rebels laid siege to the capital, Monrovia. The Sierra Leone tribunal alleges that Taylor directed, supported and trafficked guns and gems with that country’s brutal Revolutionary United Front rebels.
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