Ex-wives of warlord Taylor find opportunity in Liberian politics
THE man they once loved is serving 50 years for war crimes in a maximum-security British prison. Yet for the former wives of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, being his one-time spouse is proving no barrier to a career in politics.
For the last three years, his second wife, Jewel Howard-Taylor, has served as vice-president of the west African nation, working alongside the footballstar-turned-president George Weah.
In a land where many still see Taylor as a war hero rather than a war criminal, her association with him guarantees a bloc vote from Taylor loyalists.
But her days as the “mother” of his old National Patriotic Party could now be under threat – thanks to the return to Liberia of another ex-wife, Agnes Reeves-Taylor, a former university lecturer in Britain.
Ms Reeves-Taylor, 55, arrived back earlier this summer, having spent two years in prison while being investigated by Scotland Yard for alleged torture offences committed during Liberia’s civil war.
A scheduled four-month Old Bailey trial collapsed last December after her lawyers argued that she was not a serving state official at the time, and therefore not liable under current war crimes statutes.
While the case’s failure dismayed human rights groups, it has enhanced Ms Reeves-Taylor’s standing among Taylor supporters, who see her as a fellow victim of a miscarriage of justice. With some currently unhappy with Ms Howard-Taylor’s performance in office, her arrival has led to one faction hailing her as the new “mother”.
Ms Reeves-Taylor insisted she had no plans to “usurp” Ms Howard-Taylor, but confirmed she was considering a political career. “I’ve not yet definitely decided, but there is a great opportunity to serve people,” she said. “I left Britain because I felt paranoid after the case against me, which was based on lies. But I always planned to return to Liberia anyway, because I believe I have a lot of experience to offer.”
Ms Reeves-Taylor spoke out a week after Scotland Yard raided the south London home of another Liberian war crimes suspect who was released pending further inquires.
The war crimes unit’s decision to press ahead with further Liberian cases comes despite the collapse of the Taylor case, which is thought to have cost millions of pounds. It has also laid bare the challenges of exercising jurisdiction over complex conflict zones such as Liberia, where those considered criminals by one faction can be seen as freedom fighters by another.
Taylor, who was president from 1997 to 2003, is one such case. He is currently in Durham’s Frankland prison after being convicted in 2012 of war crimes in Sierra Leone. Many of his followers, though, grew up seeing him as a protector – or at least no worse than other combatants in Liberia’s own civil war, which lasted from 1989 to 2003 and claimed 250,000 lives.
Ms Reeves-Taylor, whose 10-year marriage to Taylor ended in 1996, claimed asylum in Britain in 2004. Although she was on a sanctions blacklist at the time, she claimed her life was at risk in Liberia from armed anti-Taylor groups. Already college-educated, she ended up as a business studies lecturer at Coventry University – a career cut short by her arrest in 2017.
She said the accusations against her included running a brothel on a frontline during Liberia’s war, where 80 women were kept as sex slaves for Taylor fighters. Other charges included pistol whipping a man and running a checkpoint where massacres were carried out.
“One day I was going about my job, the next I was being treated as a hardened criminal,” she said. “None of what they accused me of ever happened – it was just guilt by association because I was Charles Taylor’s wife.”
While she now plans to write a book about her incarceration, many believe she will move quickly into Liberian politics, where a university education is highly prized.