Former Liberian president appears before tribunal today

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Attorneys for Charles Taylor will argue for the dismissal of war crimes charges against the former Liberian president, who appears today before a tribunal that is bent on sending a powerful message to despots that no one is above the law.

Security is tight at the Special Court in Sierra Leone, the country to which Taylor is accused of exporting his own civil war. Taylor, the first former African president to be charged with crimes against humanity, will be protected by bulletproof glass and dozens of U.N. peacekeepers -- as will court officials who have received death threats.

He has repeatedly declared his innocence and will be asked to enter a plea to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery and mutilation. Taylor is to be judged by a U.N.-backed tribunal established to try those seen as bearing greatest responsibility for atrocities during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.

Taylor was exiled to Nigeria in 2003. Last month, Nigerian officials said they would hand him over to the tribunal. Last week, Taylor fled his home detention but was captured as he tried to slip into Cameroon.

Taylor's spiritual adviser said the warlord told him in a Sunday night telephone call from jail that Nigerian security forces had urged him to flee.

"They said 'You get on and go,' and they left him behind," the adviser, Kilari Anand Paul, said in a telephone interview from Houston, Texas.

Paul, who met Taylor in 2003 and says he helped broker Taylor's exile to Nigeria, also said Taylor felt betrayed by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Nigeria denied the allegation that Taylor was encouraged to escape.

"The story is a far-fetched figment of his jaundiced imagination," a spokesman for the Nigerian leader, Femi Fani-Kayode, said. "He must have been reading too many James Bond novels."

Many were suspicious when Nigeria's government announced Taylor's disappearance a week ago today, just days after Obasanjo reluctantly agreed to hand him over from the exile haven he had been offered under an internationally brokered peace agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war.

For two days, Nigeria had resisted calls from the United States, human rights organizations and others to arrest Taylor to ensure that he would stand trial in Sierra Leone.

The leader of Taylor's defense team, Francis Garlawulo, said Taylor was president when he was indicted in 2003 and argued the U.N.-backed court had no jurisdiction over Liberia or its head of state. The court's appeals chamber rejected a similar argument made by a lawyer for Taylor after the indictment was filed.

Garlawulo also questioned whether Taylor could receive a fair trial given intense publicity surrounding the case, saying in recent days images of Sierra Leoneans maimed by rebel fighters have dominated the world's television screens.

Taylor is accused of backing Sierra Leonean rebels notorious for maiming civilians by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips. In return for supporting them, he allegedly got a share of Sierra Leone's diamond wealth he used to fund his ambitions in Liberia.

Many hope the case will firmly establish the principle that Africa's despots are not above the law.

Taylor is making his initial appearance in Sierra Leone, but Special Court officials have requested that an international court in The Hague, Netherlands, host the trial. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has expressed fear that if the trial is held in the region, Taylor's supporters could use it as an excuse to mount another insurgency in her country.

Taylor won a disputed election in Liberia in 1997. Many former allies in an insurgency he had launched in 1989 took up arms against him in 2000 and attacked Monrovia in 2003.

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Associated Press writers Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown and Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, contributed to this report.