Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, left West Africa this morning bound for the Hague to stand trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"I can confirm he was flown out this morning to The Hague," Kanji Daramy, a spokesman for Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, the President of Sierra Leone, told the AFP news agency by telephone.

"This follows the pronouncement by Britain that it will provide a prison for Mr Taylor should he be found guilty for crimes for which he stands accused."

Margaret Beckett, the British Foreign Secretary, announced last week that Britain was ready to take responsibility for imprisoning Mr Taylor if he is convicted. He would probably be held at a special unit in Belmarsh prison, south-east London.

The offer cleared one of the major hurdles to the start of Mr Taylor's war crimes trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Netherlands had agreed his trial could be hosted at The Hague at the request of Sierra Leonean court officials, who feared that holding the trial in West Africa might revive regional instability.

The Netherlands imposed one condition - that a third country should jail Mr Taylor if he is convicted, or take him in if acquitted. Denmark, Austria and Sweden had all rejected requests to jail Mr Taylor, but Britain stepped forward last week to announce it would jail him if he were convicted.

The last logistical obstacles for his transfer were cleared away yesterday, when the Sierra Leone tribunal formally authorised Mr Taylor’s transfer.

Peter Andersen, a spokesman for the ICC, said that Mr Taylor was flown by UN helicopter to the airport on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital and escorted onto a plane that took off shortly afterward for the Netherlands.

Officials of the Sierra Leonean Special Court will conduct the proceedings, with the ICC providing only courtrooms and a jail during the trial.

Mr Taylor, 58, once one of Africa’s most feared warlords, has been indicted by the Special Court on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and violations of international human rights.

He is seen as the single most powerful figure behind a series of civil wars in Liberia and neighbouring Sierra Leone between 1989 and 2003, which left around 400,000 people dead.

He is specifically accused of sponsoring and aiding rebel groups who perpetrated murder, sexual slavery, mutilation and conscription of child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s civil war, in exchange for a share in the lucrative diamond trade.

The warlord turned politician launched a Liberian insurgency in 1989, and won elections that handed him the presidency in 1997. Rebels took up arms against him three years later, and Taylor fled in exile to Nigeria in 2003 as part of a deal that helped end Liberia’s 14-year civil war.

After the Nigerian government agreed in March to a request from Mr Taylor’s successor as Liberia’s president to hand him over, he tried to slip away - but was captured and flown to Sierra Leone.

He has been in the UN-backed Sierra Leonean Special Court’s detention facilities in Freetown since March 29. He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment on April 3.

The Sierra Leone court said that extra money may have to be spent so that Mr Taylor’s trial will be accessible to Sierra Leoneans, who suffered at the hands of the brutal rebel movement he is accused of backing and directing.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• The Japanese Prime Minister is doomed: or is he?
• Brighton company 'involved in cyber attack'
• The art of survival: it's all in the mind