LAGOS, Nigeria (March 28, 2006) — Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has disappeared from his villa in the southern Nigerian town of Calabar, shortly after the Nigerian government agreed to turn him over to a war crimes tribunal.
News reports have said it is unknown whether the former president escaped or had been kidnapped.
Mr. Taylor, who resigned as Liberia's president in 2003, is accused of instigating the deaths, torture and rape of hundreds of thousands of people in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone.
During the 1989-97 Liberian civil war, Mr. Taylor's troops occupied the 240-square-mile natural rubber plantation owned by Bridgestone/Firestone, and during that time unknown persons allegedly tapped rubber trees to barter for weapons.