LAGOS, Nigeria (March 28) — 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 Taylor over to a war crimes tribunal.
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, 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.