Even from the dock he displays that mixture of arrogance, agility, charm and brutality that made him so powerful, so feared and so utterly unscrupulous as he masterminded the bloodshed and savagery that engulfed his country and its neighbours. Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, is the first African to face a war crimes tribunal in The Hague. After months of excruciating testimony from some of the countless victims he mutilated and the child soldiers he recruited, he made the most of his turn on the stand, roaring defiance, scorning the stories of cannibalism and atrocities, insisted that he never ordered murder, torture or rape and that these, as well as the other eight charges he faces, were all “lies”.

The details of the charges and the harrowing testimony of witnesses have, however, already been broadcast almost daily from the specially convened court back to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is here that Mr Taylor’s depredations took place, as he fomented civil war in an attempt to enrich himself with smuggled diamonds. And it is in Sierra Leone, which was terrorised for 11 years by the Revolutionary United Front and the drugged child soldiers sent by Mr Taylor to hack off people’s hands and rip open the wombs of pregnant women, that the trial is proving most cathartic. However ghastly the memories of a war that cost 500,000 lives and ended only with the intervention of the United Nations, the trial has already achieved much. It has shown the victims that, whatever his Western education and religious opportunism, even a tyrant can be held accountable. International justice applies as much to Africa as it does to the Balkans.

Mr Taylor intends to call almost 200 defence witnesses, claiming the accusations are disinformation, lies and rumours. He was, he insists, merely trying to stabilise Liberia. The coup he launched in 1989 was intended to bring back multiparty democracy and the rule of law after a decade of turmoil. Few in the courtroom, fewer still in Africa, will believe him. But the danger is that, unless the judges keep a close grip on proceedings, it will, like the earlier trial of Slobodan Milosevic, become bogged down in procedural wrangling. It would be all too easy to lose sight of the enormity of what has happened. It would be an appalling misuse of the trial if Mr Taylor were able to persuade Africa, from the dock, that the proceedings in The Hague were a racist attack on African leaders and on African independence.

Not many people responsible for instigating civil war have ever been brought to trial. The importance, therefore, of similar institutions, such as the International Criminal Court as an instrument to enforce human rights law should not be underestimated. There was initial scepticism that such a court would ever be able to go after the political leaders, the men who ordered, rather than those who carried out, atrocities. But in its brief life the court has shown that it is not intimidated by politics or by protocol. The trial of Mr Taylor sends a message to West Africa about norms of behaviour, just as the indictment of President Bashir of Sudan over Darfur is a vital stand against genocidal atrocities. Those countries Mr Taylor ravaged are slowly recovering. International aid has helped. So too has the election of leaders determined to uphold the standards of humanity. The court is playing a vital role in reminding the world what those standards are.