Charles Taylor, Monster: the trial.

This is a post simply to note the wheels of occasional justice grinding along, at least enough to chronicle a bit of the grotesque, insane, diabolical, putrance that was manifested by the once president of Liberia.
Read the Kansas City Star column by Mary Sanchez,--"A butcher and a tyrant finally called to account"
excerpt: "...

The level of cruelty aided and abetted by Taylor is difficult to fathom.
He once ran under the campaign slogan “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him anyway.”

Taylor is the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes since World War II. ...

So many of the world’s monsters have gone to their graves having escaped accountability — Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic, to name a few. Yet others accused or suspected of human rights abuses are very much alive; Baby Doc Duvalier of Haiti and Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala readily come to mind. As does Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, who is wanted for genocide in Darfur. Perhaps someday he too will wind up at The Hague.

"...A rape victim told of being forced to carry a sack with the severed heads of relatives, including her two children.
Decapitations were common.
The heads would sometimes be placed on stakes, threats to induce compliance with slave labor in the diamond mines.
 Others told of witnessing soldiers ordering lineups of people who were to have their limbs cut off.
Children did much of the killing, often drugged-induced so they would willingly murder their own families or nearby villagers..."

now you tell me, how is a woman to live after that?
How does one live after that??!

Links with pictures, timelines, etc. here:

http://storify.com/Indepthafrica/charles-taylor-war-crimes-verdict-live

http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/en/2012/05/30/Charles%20Taylor%20sentenced%20to%2050%20years.aspx

"Taylor is the former president of Liberia, who engineered his election into office after prevailing in the civil war he had instigated. He also masterminded the massacres of Sierra Leone’s civil war, which killed 50,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left much of the county’s population mutilated — hands, feet and legs hacked off by rebels."  mary Sanchez

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sierraleone/9226697/Charles-Taylor-Sierra-Leone-and-the-victims.html

video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vdbzt-GJrM

more on the general issue of corrupt power:
http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/child-soldiers-in-sudan-war-child.html

http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/invisible-children-coming-to-k-state.html

http://marysbeagooddogblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/little-boys-little-girls-women-men-and.html