Ex-Liberia President Charles Taylor to stay in UK prison

Ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor has been ordered to serve the rest of his jail term in the UK, after losing a request to be transferred to Rwanda.

He had argued that he was being denied his rights to a family life, because his wife and children had not been granted UK visas.

The judges rejected this argument, saying they had not properly applied.

A UN-backed court convicted him of war crimes over his support for rebels who committed atrocities in Sierra Leone.

• In the year 1989 Taylor Launched rebellion in Liberia
• 1991: Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebellion starts in Sierra Leone
• 1997: Elected president after a 1995 peace deal
• 1999: Rebels take up arms against Taylor
• June 2003: Arrest warrant issued; two months later he steps down and goes into exile in Nigeria
• March 2006: Arrested after a failed escape bid and sent to Sierra Leone
• June 2007: His trial opens - hosted in The Hague for security reasons
• April 2012: Convicted of aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes - later sentenced to 50 years in jail
• Oct 2013: Arrives in the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence

Taylor was convicted on 11 charges including terrorism, rape, murder and the use of child soldiers by rebel groups in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war, in which some 50,000 people died.

The former Liberian leader was found to have supplied weapons to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in exchange for blood diamonds.

The rebels were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians to terrorize the population even as Taylor has always insisted he is innocent and that his only contact with the rebels was to urge them to stop fighting.