OK, what is going on here? Liberia’s brutal former-warlord Charles Taylor is enjoying asylum in Nigeria, rather than being sent to the UN Special Court in Sierra Leone to be tried for war crimes. Nigeria had previously indicated that it would turn Taylor over to an elected Liberian government, if not to the special court.
Now, a few days before Nigeria’s president Obasanjo meets with Liberia’s new elected leader, Obasanjo has a hush-hush airport meeting with Taylor….
Ironically, Nigeria has been the most generous supplier of peacekeeping troops in West Africa and has also sheltered Taylor, one of the biggest instigators of violence in multiple West African countries.
Nigeria President Olusegun Obasanjo has met privately with the former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who lives in exile in the east of Nigeria.
Officials said their conversation at Lagos airport on Sunday lasted about 30 minutes but gave no further details.
Nigeria is under pressure to hand Mr Taylor over to an international tribunal in Sierra Leone that indicted him on war crimes charges.
President Obasanjo is due to meet Mr Taylor’s successor later this week.
Officials said Mr Taylor arrived in Lagos in a plane belonging to the president’s fleet and they met in the presidential lounge before he returned to Calabar.