Poor little dictator

The Hague

The war crimes trial of former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor was halted before it could even start this week, when Taylor claimed he could not afford a lawyer. Taylor, who is charged with arming rebels who killed and mutilated hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, said he is in a state of “partial indigence.” A United Nations report, though, found that Taylor has access to several million dollars of the nearly half-billion-dollar fortune he amassed during his reign. He also refused the court’s proposal to give him $50,000 a month for his defense. “What’s been offered to Taylor, presuming he’s indigent, which we doubt, is very adequate,” said prosecutor Stephen Rapp.