The former African warlord Charles Taylor, on trial in The Hague for murder, rape, hacking off hands and sending drugged child soldiers into battle, held up his hands yesterday and swore that he had never eaten human flesh.

Cannibalism, he said, shaking his head in disgust, “it makes you feel like throwing up”.

Mr Taylor, the former President of Liberia, is the first African leader to face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the ten-year civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The war, which ended in 2001, ranks as one of the most savage in the 20th century.

Mr Taylor’s defence counsel has accepted that horrible atrocities were committed during the war but says that the Liberian President, busy running his own country, had no part in them. The prosecutor in the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, says that Mr Taylor sold insurgents in Sierra Leone weapons in return for “blood diamonds”. Part of the prosecutor’s task is to establish that Mr Taylor terrorised the civilian population of Sierra Leone by allowing the rebels to run wild. Part of the repertoire, prosecution witnesses have claimed, was to rip out the hearts of opponents and eat them.

“It is sickening”, said Mr Taylor yesterday. “You must be sick to believe it.”

One witness, Joseph “Zigzag” Marzah, said in testimony last year that Mr Taylor — his commander — had ordered the rebels to eat people from the Krahn tribe to set an example — and that he had been ordered to eat captured United Nations staff, “using them as pork to eat”.

Mr Marzah went into detail as to how the victims were sliced up for cooking and seasoned. Mr Taylor, he said, knew of this. Another witness, Akiatu Tholley, has told the court that she was flogged and raped by the rebels and then forced to eat the heart of a militiaman recently killed in the crossfire. “If anybody refused eating it, that person would be killed,” she told the court.

Mr Taylor said that the witnesses’ claims were “total nonsense”. Mr Marzah had claimed to be a member of the secretive Poro cult, together with Mr Taylor, and that they both ate human flesh.

“It never happened,” said the former President. “I never ordered any combatant to eat anyone.”

Mr Taylor’s team has admitted that cannibalism was practised — but says that it was never ordered or indulged in by Mr Taylor.

Again and again during his testimony, which began earlier this month, Mr Taylor has tried to convince the court that he was not a monster, but rather a misunderstood visionary leader who had tried to build a pan-African democracy. He has, therefore, been denying, for example, that he ordered human entrails to be stretched out like rope in front of checkpoints.

Mr Taylor insisted that Liberia had its own riches and there was no reason to destabilise Sierra Leone and risk losing access to foreign aid.

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