Charles Taylor (Liberia)
Charles Taylor
22nd President of Liberia
In office
2 August 1997 – 11 August 2003
Vice President Moses Blah
Preceded by
Samuel Doe
Succeeded by Moses Blah
Born
28 January 1948 (1948-01-28)
Arthington, Liberia
Political party National Patriotic
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born
28 January 1948) served as President of
Liberia from 2 August 1997 to 11 August
2003[1]. He was once one of Africa’s most
prominent warlords[2] during the First Liberi-
an Civil War in the early 1990s and was elec-
ted president at the end of that conflict. He
was subsequently forced into exile, and is
currently being held in the United Nations
Detention Unit on the premises of the Penit-
entiary
Institution Haaglanden,
location
Scheveningen in The Hague, and on trial by
the Special Court for Sierra Leone.[3]
Early years
Charles McArthur Taylor was born
in
Arthington, a town near Monrovia, on 28
January 1948 to Nelson and Bernice Taylor.
His mother was a member of the Gola ethnic
group. According to most reports his father
was an Americo-Liberian, although other
sources claim he was actually Afro-Trinidadi-
an. As a young man Taylor was very inter-
ested in the Slave Trade and American-
Liberian Relations. Taylor was a student at
Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts,
from 1972 to 1977, earning a degree in eco-
nomics. Taylor took the name ’Ghankay’ later
on, possibly to please and curry favor with
the indigenous people.[4]
In 1979, he led a demonstration at the
Liberian Mission to the United Nations in
New York City, protesting then-president of
Liberia William Tolbert who was on a state
visit to the U.S. at the time. Tolbert publicly
debated Taylor, but Taylor made the mistake
of insinuating he would seize the Liberian
Mission by force, which led to his arrest by
New York police. He was later released and
invited back to Liberia by Tolbert. Taylor sup-
ported the 12 April 1980 bloody coup led by
Samuel Kanyon Doe, which saw the murder
of William Tolbert and the seizure of power
by Doe (the first president