Liberia’s ex-president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in jail by a UN-backed war crimes court in The Hague on Wednesday.

Last month, Taylor was found guilty of 11 charges of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.
Delivering the sentence, judge Richard Lussick said Taylor’s crimes were of the ‘utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality’ and had led to the loss of many innocent lives, the Guardian reported.
Taylor, 64, insists he is innocent and his lawyer has told the BBC he will appeal against the sentence.