Timeline: Charles Taylor
Key dates in the life of warlord turned Liberian president Charles Taylor, who has been convicted of arming rebels who killed and mutilated thousands in Sierra Leone.
Taylor works for Liberian president Samuel Doe in a position that gives him control of much of the country's budget. Doe accuses him of embezzling $US1 million, and Taylor flees to the United States.
Jailed by US authorities for embezzlement, Taylor escapes from his Massachusetts cell in after a year behind bars. He resurfaces in Ivory Coast.
Taylor leads a rebellion by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) to topple Doe.
The uprising leads to one of Africa's most brutal civil wars, involving at least seven rival factions and claiming between 250,000 and 300,000 lives. In June 1990, a month-long siege of the capital Monrovia takes place. In August, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sends a peacekeeping force which secures Monrovia in October.
The notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by former army officer Foday Sankoh, crosses the border from Liberia into Sierra Leone. The civil war, which lasts until January 2002, leaves some 120,000 dead and thousands of civilians mutilated. The wars are marked by atrocities by drug-fuelled combatants who gain notoriety for murders, systematic rapes, abductions, amputations and the kidnapping of thousands of children who were then forced to fight among their ranks.
Taylor wins elections in Liberia and is sworn in as president on August 2, marking the culmination of a peace accord.
Fighting rages in Liberia between government troops and forces in the north.
The United Nations accuses Taylor of fuelling the civil war in Sierra Leone and profiting from trade in "blood diamonds" and arms traffic, and slaps sanctions on Liberia. In June, 2003, a UN-mandated court in Freetown announces it has indicted Taylor for war crimes relating to Sierra Leone's civil war.
Taylor, under pressure from rebels and the international community, hands power to his deputy and heads for exile in Nigeria.
The UN and the United States freeze Taylor's assets.
Taylor is arrested in Nigeria, deported to Liberia and taken to Freetown where he is put behind bars at the UN special court. On June 20 he is transferred to the Netherlands.
Taylor's trial opens in the Hague, to which he was transferred for security reasons. The trial wraps up on March 11, 2011.
Taylor becomes the first former head of state convicted by a world court since the World War II Nuremberg trials.
Taylor is sentenced to 50 years in prison by the UN-backed court in the Hague.