January 28, 1948 - Charles Taylor
Taylor's path from embezzler and escaped prisoner to warlord to head of state traces an arc of compounding violence that left Liberia devastated across two civil wars. His support for Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front — whose hallmark atrocities included systematic amputations of civilians — formed the basis of his eventual war crimes conviction by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, making him the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since Nuremberg. The scale of regional destabilization he helped engineer across West Africa in the 1990s places him among the most consequential figures of that era's conflicts.
From Wikipedia
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born 28 January 1948) is a Liberian former politician. He served as the 22nd president of Liberia from 2 August 1997 until his resignation on 11 August 2003 as a result of the Second Liberian Civil War and growing international pressure. After leaving office, he was found guilty of war crimes committed in the Sierra Leone Civil War, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Born in Arthington, Montserrado County, Liberia, Taylor earned a degree at Bentley College in the United States before returning to Liberia to work in the government of Samuel Doe. After being removed for embezzlement and imprisoned by President Doe, Taylor escaped prison in 1989. He eventually arrived in Libya, where he was trained as a guerrilla fighter. He returned to Liberia in 1989 as the head of a Libyan-backed rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, to overthrow the Doe government, initiating the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996). Following Doe's execution, Taylor gained control of a large portion of the country and became one of the most prominent warlords in Africa.
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