“Lies! Lies! And more lies!” Charles Taylor, the first African leader to be put in the dock for war crimes, roared his innocence yesterday in a bravura performance.

The former Liberian President, 61, has kept silent since he was turned over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone three years ago, so he was pregnant with stored-up anger. Out it all poured — the resentment with the West, disappointment with other African leaders, a few tears here, the disdain, sly humour, flashes of charm but, above all, an enduring arrogance.

He was fed up, he told the court in The Hague, of being treated “like some common street thug”. The world was depicting him as a monster but he was a figure of historical significance, one of a group of leaders who tried to keep alive a pan-African vision.

“People have me eating human beings,” said Mr Taylor, referring to one of the key prosecution witnesses, Joseph “Zig-Zag” Marzah, who served in one of the leader’s security units. “How can people be so low as to think that of me?” The point was to destroy him. “Haven’t they had their pound of flesh yet?” he added.

Mr Taylor is not charged with cannibalism, though the subject kept cropping up. The Special Court — run jointly by the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN — is considering whether he steered the butchering rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), as they swept through Sierra Leone from 1991.

The aim, said the court prosecutor, was to enrich himself from the country’s diamonds — and in doing so he allegedly encouraged or tolerated criminal methods. The 11-point indictment accuses Mr Taylor of murder, rape, sexual enslavement, the forced conscription of children, mutilation, pillage and terrorising the population.

Mr Taylor has always been a showman. In 1999, two years into his presidency, the UN accused him of gun running and diamond profiteering. His response was to address a mass prayer meeting dressed in white priestly vestments. He threw himself in front of the altar, asked Jesus Christ for forgiveness — but denied the accusations.

This time he took centre stage after listening to months of hostile or grisly testimony: stories of burying pregnant women alive, eating baby hearts, stringing human intestines across checkpoints, heads stuck on poles. Much of it, according to the prosecution, committed in the name of, or to please, Mr Taylor and his cronies.

Mr Taylor seemed to relish his own performance. There are several weeks of his testimony ahead, followed by 249 defence witnesses. The defendant may no longer be president — he resigned after pressure from the US — but his political instincts are still alive. He made it clear that he was addressing two audiences: the four judges — presiding over a chamber borrowed from the International Criminal Court — and the African continent. The African media has been broadcasting every stage of the trial — the testimony of amputees and multiple rape victims — to local audiences, and in so doing has subtly raised the standards demanded of elected leaders.

Sometimes Mr Taylor’s testimony seemed misplaced as far as the second, larger audience was concerned: how could he have steered the Sierra Leone rebels, he asked, when he was so busy trying to rebuild Liberia after its own civil war. The argument was plausible but two African court observers raised their hands in dismay. “It is as if he was too short of time, you know, busy-busy,” said one.

“He doesn’t seem to realise there is a moral issue involved.” One witness reported delivering diamonds to Mr Taylor in return for guns and ammunition — a vital piece of testimony linking him with the insurgency in Sierra Leone and establishing his interest in “blood diamonds”. The stones were supposed to have been carried in a washed-out mayonnaise jar.

“This never happened,” he said, “not in a mayo jar, not in a coffee jar, not in anything. I never received diamonds from the RUF. There’s not a human who believes in the truth that diamonds were given for arms.” So the many months of blood-soaked accusations are being followed by weeks of denial. Yes, said the former leader, he did have generals executed “after facing military tribunals and having their day in court” — but only because they had committed atrocities.

If he had allowed atrocities to take place in Sierra Leone that would have amounted to double standards. If there was one thing that Mr Taylor would not tolerate, it was double standards.

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