Former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, who vanished in
Nigeria after authorities reluctantly agreed to transfer him to a war crimes
tribunal, has been arrested at the country's border, Nigerian police said
Wednesday.
Taylor, who went missing Monday night, was caught at Nigeria's southern
border with Cameroon, national police spokesman Haz Iwendi told The Associated
Press.
Nigeria, which had granted asylum to the fast-talking, U.S.-educated
economist under a 2003 agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war,
said on Tuesday that Taylor had disappeared a day earlier. The admission came
three days after Nigeria ¡ª under pressure from Washington and others ¡ª
reluctantly bowed to pressure to surrender Taylor to face justice.
The statement about his disappearance was released an hour before Obasanjo
left Nigeria on a presidential jet headed for Washington, where he was scheduled
to meet with President Bush on Wednesday.
Nigeria had announced it would hand Taylor over to a U.N.-backed Sierra Leone
tribunal to be tried for alleged war crimes related to Sierra Leone's 1991-2001
civil war, but the government had made no moves to arrest him before he
disappeared.
Taylor, a one-time warlord and rebel leader, is charged with backing Sierra
Leone rebels, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off
body parts. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes
against humanity.
While the Sierra Leone tribunal's charges refer only to the war there, Taylor
also has been accused of starting civil war in Liberia and of harboring al-Qaida
suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998,
killing more than 200 people.
Obasanjo initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor. But Saturday, after
Liberia's new President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over
for trial, Obasanjo agreed.
On Tuesday, a Nigerian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said Taylor had been in a
guarded cavalcade of cars traveling Monday from his villa in Calabar to Port
Harcourt, site of the nearest airport, when the convoy stopped and he was
allowed to flee, possibly spirited away by commandoes.