FELIX DURUMBAH
14 April 2004
Lagos — FORMER Liberian president, Charles Taylor, Monday said he ordered the court martial and subsequent execution of one of his men responsible for the killing of two Nigerian journalists in the early 1990s in the war-torn West African nation.
He said the journalists did not die in vain.
Messrs Tayo Awotunsin of Champion newspapers and Krees Imodibie of The Guardian were killed in 1992 during the civil war in Liberia by troops of Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).
The killing of the newsmen who were covering the war outraged Nigerians with calls in some quarters on the Federal Government to take decisive action to punish Taylor.
Taylor is at present on exile in Nigeria.
Opening up on the killing of the journalists during an interview on Lagos-based Channels Television, Taylor regretted the action of his men.
He identified the man who ordered the slaying of the journalists as Col. Tuo Major.
Following the killing, Taylor said, he despatched his then Press Officer, Mr. Reginald Goodrich, to Nigeria to parley with families of the deceased with an offer of compensation.
The angry families, he disclosed, rejected the offer.
On his indictment by a United Nations (UN)-backed war tribunal over the killings in Sierra Leone during the late '90s and early 2004, Taylor denied supporting the cutting of prisoners' limbs by his Revolutionary United Front (RUF) allies in that country.
He also denied that the NPFL, during the Liberian civil war, acted in the same manner as the RUF.
"I was leader of NPFL in Liberia for seven years. There was no incident of cutting limbs. My NPFL conducted themselves within international law. If not, Nigerians in Liberia would not have voted me in as president during the subsequent elections, he stated.
Taylor challenged his detractors who accused him of encouraging genocide in Sierra Leone in exchange for diamonds from the RUF to "go back to my record for 10 years; if they found money from such trade, then I'm guilty. I've no assets abroad."
The UN, he said, should provide proof of his involvement in such heinous barter arrangement with the RUF "because my honour is at stake."
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