CHARLES TAYLOR, the one-time President of Liberia and one of Africa’s most feared former warlords, arrived in Sierra Leone last night, where he will become the first African leader to stand trial for war crimes.

He was flown aboard a UN helicopter into the compound in Freetown that houses the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which has indicted him on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Liberian and Sierra Leone civil wars.

Mongolian UN guards and Sierra Leonean paramilitary police were protecting the court complex, which is surrounded by a barbed wire-topped high wall and watch towers.

Desmond Da Silva, the chief prosecutor at the UN-backed court, said that Mr Taylor, 58, could make an initial appearance by the end of the week, although his trial was unlikely to begin for some months.

Mr Taylor’s custody brought an end to three days of confusion after it emerged that he had gone missing from his sanctuary in southern Nigeria and was on the run.

He was arrested yesterday in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, accompanied by his son and a woman, while attempting to cross the border into Cameroon from northern Nigeria.

Local police said that they had found two 50kg (110lb) sacks in the boot of his car containing large quantities of US dollars and euros. Mr Taylor was later seen dressed in his trademark white safari suit, being escorted under armed guard on to the Nigerian presidential jet at Maiduguri airport, where he was flown to Liberia.

Heavily armed soldiers from the UN force supporting a new, democratically elected Government in war-ravaged Liberia stepped up security at Monrovia airport to prevent any unrest upon his arrival in a country where he still enjoys some support.

President Johnson-Sirleaf had said that she did not want Mr Taylor on Liberian territory any longer than was necessary. His repatriation came after mounting pressure by the US on President Obasanjo of Nigeria, who was at the White House for a meeting with President Bush while the events were unfolding in West Africa.

“I feel vindicated,” said Mr Obasanjo, who denied that he had tried to help the fugitive former Liberian leader to escape justice. Mr Taylor is blamed for the deaths of at least 250,000 people in the interlinked civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. In return for diamonds he supplied weapons to rebels who were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, said that the arrest would send a clear signal to all African warlords. “His capture and his being put on trial does not only close a chapter,” he said, “but it also sends a powerful message that would-be warlords would pay a price.”

Despite atrocities committed by his armies in his own country, he remains a father figure for thousands of former child soldiers to whom he was known as Pappy. Many Liberians, whose parents were slaughtered in revenge attacks by Mr Taylor’s enemies, say that they owe their lives to Mr Taylor. Others vowed to kill him if he ever sets foot in Liberia again.

Mr Taylor fled the country in 2003 and was given asylum under a regional pact to spare the country further bloodshed.

He was captured by security forces in the town of Gamboru-Ngala, close to Cameroon’s border with the Nigerian state of Borno. He arrived at the frontier in a Range Rover with diplomatic number plates. “He passed through immigration,” Babangana Alhaji Kata, a local trader, said. “But when he reached customs they were suspicious and insisted on searching the jeep, where they found a large amount of US dollars.”

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