Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape

Subject: Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:00 am

The mystery has lingered for more than two decades, spawning conspiracy theories about the US government’s connection to one of Africa’s most brutal leaders: How did Charles G. Taylor escape from a Massachusetts county jail in 1985, setting him on the road to a bloody reign as Liberia’s president?

Taylor, on trial in The Hague for war crimes, broke his silence on the question this week, saying he was sprung from jail as part of a US intelligence operation.

On the night of Sept. 15, 1985, he recounted Wednesday, a guard unlocked his cell at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility - where he was awaiting extradition to Liberia on embezzlement charges - and escorted him to a less-secure unit of the jail. Taylor then tied sheets together, climbed out an open window, and clambered over a fence before meeting two men he assumed were US agents, who whisked him to New York by car.

“I am calling it my release be cause I didn’t break out,’’ Taylor, 61, told his special war crimes court. “I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding’’ afterward.

The jail guard, he added, “had to be working with someone else.’’

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/07/17/liberias_taylor_says_us_arranged_escape/

Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape

Liberia’s Taylor says US arranged escape

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