Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is originally from Liberia.
Liberia, Sierra Leone suffered former strongman's atrocities.
by Emira Woods
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was found guilty of 11 charges by a court in the Netherlands, is a man of many firsts. He's the first head of state to have escaped from a medium-security prison in the United States. He was the first sitting head of state to face charges of international crimes against humanity since the Nuremberg trials. Now, he's the first head of state since World War II to have been convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.