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Court upholds 50-year Prison Sentence for former Liberian President, Charles Taylor
He added he had spoken by telephone to Taylor’s wife Victoria, who is in the Netherlands. “I thought she would be downhearted, but she was not,” he said. “We are going to put our lives back together.”
Taylor’s lawyer Morris Anyah said outside the courtroom that Taylor himself was disappointed but “he has remained stoic and calm.”
“He expressed his view that the next phase of life is to see how to preserve his contact with his family and ensure that his younger children are provided for,” Anyah said.
In a development that could have a lasting impact on future war crimes cases, Thursday’s ruling clashed with an appeals decision by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in which former Serbian Gen. Momcilo Perisic was acquitted of aiding and abetting war crimes.
Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said in order to aid and abet a crime, a suspect has to have “specifically directed” aid toward committing crimes.
But judges in the Taylor case openly disagreed with that. They said the key to guilt in aiding and abetting a crime is that a suspect’s participation encouraged the commission of crimes and had a substantial effect on the crimes actually being committed – not the particular manner in which a suspect was involved.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
