For the first time in history, tyrants are starting to get their comeuppances by formal trials.
Slobidan Milosevic
Saddam Hussein
Charles Taylor

It is a wonderful precedent. If it becomes common enough, it might just discourage a few would-be tyrants from staging coups.

http://smh.com.au/news/world/moneybags-taylor-sent-to-sierra-leone-to-face-war-crimes-trial/2006/03/30/1143441277218.html
Moneybags Taylor sent to Sierra Leone to face war crimes trial

By Robyn Dixon and Hans Nichols in Freetown, Sierra Leone
March 31, 2006

UNSHAVEN and haggard, the former Liberian President Charles Taylor was placed in a detention cell in Sierra Leone after his early morning arrest trying to flee Nigeria carrying large bags of cash.

Earlier on Wednesday, as he had emerged from a helicopter bringing him to the capital, Freetown, about two dozen Sierra Leoneans on the roof of a nearby house cheered in apparent support of his arrest.

Taylor will be the first former African leader to face international justice for war crimes that include forcible recruitment of child soldiers, murder, rape, mutilation and sexual enslavement of civilians in a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone that ended in 2002 with more than 50,000 dead.

Taylor's arrest is further evidence that time is running out for the leaders of West Africa's bloodiest conflicts. Nine former leaders in the Sierra Leone conflict await trial in Sierra Leone. In addition, Thomas Lubanga, a militia leader during the civil war in the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, is facing trial in The Hague.

Escorted by two other helicopters, a United Nations helicopter carrying Taylor landed in the compound of the UN Special Court on Sierra Leone. Inside the building, a court official read Taylor the 11-count indictment on war crimes for his role in fomenting war in diamond-rich Sierra Leone, which neighbours Liberia. Taylor is due to appear in court within days to enter his plea, but it will be months before he is granted a hearing.

Court prosecutor Desmond de Silva said that "[Taylor's] presence … sends out a clear message that no matter how rich or powerful or feared people may be, the law is above them."

Taylor - who had been given asylum in Nigeria in 2003 after he went into exile as part of a deal to end 14 years of civil war in Liberia - was arrested in a Land Rover, carrying two large sacks of cash, at Nigeria's border with Cameroon, according to Nigerian officials in the northeastern state of Borno. Travelling in an entourage of several cars, Taylor passed through the Nigerian customs post but found the gate at the immigration post padlocked, according to reports. When immigration officials pounced, the other vehicles fled.

Taylor's capture, a day after he had disappeared, saved the Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, embarrassment in his meeting in Washington with President George Bush. Mr Obasanjo said that he felt vindicated by the arrest: "If we had been negligent, then Charles Taylor would have got away."