A tyrant on trial

It can be lonely writing about and covering wars and humans rights atrocities in Africa. Nobody really cares - at least not as much as they might had the victims been from almost anywhere else on the planet.

Consider the coverage afforded to the civil wars in Liberia and in the former Yugoslavia. They happened at around the same time. More died in Liberia. How many reading this even know that Liberia was consumed by a horrific, anarchic conflict for much of the 1990s?

It was, and so was next door Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor - first a warlord and then president of Liberia - is now on trial in The Hague for his role in the latter conflict. He’s on the stand now. The Special Court for Sierra Leone is posting daily transcripts. They’re worth reading.