AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Charles Taylor rewarded militia fighters who killed babies during West Africa’s civil wars and called one woman’s unborn child an “enemy” who must die, a former militia commander testified Wednesday.
During a grim day at Taylor’s war-crimes trial in The Hague, Joseph “Zigzag” Marzah said he committed hundreds of murders on the former Liberian president’s orders. He claimed Taylor celebrated his rise to power with a human sacrifice, burying a pregnant woman alive in sand.
“We executed everybody — babies, women, old men. There were so many executions. I can’t remember them all,” Marzah told the court.
Taylor, 59, is accused of orchestrating violence in neighboring Sierra Leone’s civil war from his presidential palace in Liberia. He is accused of trading so-called blood diamonds to finance the war, which ended in 2002.
