A terrifying image has come to symbolise the dark heart of Africa: glazed-eyed, ten-year-old boys in football shirts with grenade launchers on their shoulders, ready to kill their elders on command.

The child soldier, confused cannon fodder in the scramble for diamonds, power and territory, has become a central figure in the prosecution of Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President, as he faces a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Courtenay Griffiths, a British QC, laid out the defence of the former head of state, setting him up as the peace-maker and peace-broker of West Africa with not a drop of blood on his hands. “Child soldiers were not a Charles Taylor invention,” said Mr Griffiths, opening what will be several weeks of testimony aimed at rescuing his client’s place in history.

Sitting behind his QC Mr Taylor, wearing tinted glasses, stroked the sleeves of his expensive suit; today he will break his silence and try to distance himself from the atrocities that occurred during the savage 11-year civil and ethnic war in Sierra Leone, across the border from Liberia.

For more than five of those years, between 1997 and 2003, Mr Taylor was Liberia’s President and, according to the chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp, made common cause with the Revolutionary United Front rebels of Sierra Leone with a view to plundering the country’s diamonds.

The charge sheet, presented to the Special Court — set up as a joint institution by the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN — accuses Mr Taylor of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, pillage and conscripting children under the age of 15. Mr Taylor swears that he is innocent and Mr Griffiths emphasised that the burden of proof is with the prosecution to establish that he was ordering the atrocities, and that there was a chain of communication and command.

Witnesses for the prosecution, multiple rape victims and amputees have been testifying in The Hague — deemed more secure than Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone — to the sheer magnitude of the violence. Human intestines were stretched out like rope at checkpoints, heads were stuck on stakes like totem poles.

Joseph “Zig Zag” Marzah, a key witness, claimed that he personally delivered diamonds to Mr Taylor in exchange for weapons that were then sent to Sierra Leone. Mr Marzah said in testimony last year that he was part of a select unit organised by Mr Taylor. In one incident, Mr Marzah said, Mr Taylor’s unit had cut open the wombs of pregnant women and killed the babies. Under cross-examination Mr Marzah said he and Mr Taylor were part of a secret religious society and that Mr Taylor had himself eaten human hearts on several occasions.

The defence team will be calling about 240 witnesses — in an attempt to discredit those Liberians and Sierra Leoneans who have claimed to link Mr Taylor with the bloodshed.

“We have never questioned the fact that atrocities took place,” said Mr Griffiths. The key point, he said, was how much credibility could be attached to the low-level rebels who allegedly reported back to Mr Taylor and transmitted his orders. “What Mr Taylor says is: how could I have been micromanaging the crisis in Sierra Leone when I was running a country besieged on many sides?”

Mr Rapp, however, told reporters that the vicious turmoil in the neighbouring state was indeed being run by remote control.

“He had reason to fear his diamonds could be pilfered,” said Mr Rapp. “He had to have his eyes and ears on the ground.” It was not necessary for a conviction, said the prosecutor, to prove that there was a direct order to rape, murder and pillage — though there was witness testimony to that effect. It would be sufficient to show that Mr Taylor knew what was going on, that he accepted the use of criminal methods to reach his goals. If Mr Taylor is found guilty he will be the first African head of state to be brought to book for war crimes.

Mr Taylor takes to the stand today determined to show that if things were sometimes bad, they were not done with his approval. The prosecution says it is a matter of record that he set up the “Small Boys’ Unit” — made up of children under 11 — and that one of his election slogans in his presidential campaign was: “He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him.” That is one promise that could come back to haunt him.

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