Film producer mounts legal challenge over Charles Taylor interview

Film producer mounts legal challenge over Charles Taylor interview

UK’s refusal to allow former Liberian president jailed for war crimes to be interviewed raises public interest questions

      Charles Taylor in court at The Hague in 2012. He was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity. Photograph: Reuters

      A documentary film company is preparing to mount a legal challenge against the government’s refusal to allow Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president who is serving a 50-year war crimes sentence in a British jail, to give an interview.

      The formal application by Spirit Level Film to subject Taylor to an on-camera interrogation about his political career highlights the strict regulations limiting access to inmates and raises questions about what constitutes legitimate public interest in such a notorious figure.

      The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) refused to allow the interview to go ahead on the grounds that visits from the media are only permitted in exceptional circumstances, the interview aims to highlight a miscarriage of justice and the public interest grounds are satisfied.

      Taylor, who pleaded not guilty to all 11 charges on his indictment, was convicted by the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone, which was established to deal with the aftermath of the country’s decade-long civil war.

Charles Taylor in May 1990. He is only the second former head of state to have faced judgment in an international court on war crimes charges. Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images

      Although president of neighbouring Liberia, he was found guilty in 2012 of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity through support for rebels who carried out atrocities including amputations and beheadings in Sierra Leone.

      The court was told that Taylor received “blood diamonds” in return for channeling weapons to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and other factions. In the course of the trial, the British model Naomi Campbell and the US actor Mia Farrow were called as prosecution witnesses.

      Before Taylor’s trial, the UK agreed to incarcerate him if he was convicted under an agreement with Holland and a number of west African states.

      Following an unsuccessful appeal against his conviction, Taylor arrived in the UK late last year. Now aged 66, he is only the second former head of state to have faced judgment in an international court on war crimes charges. Karl Dönitz, the admiral who led Nazi Germany for a brief period following Adolf Hitler’s suicide is the only other one.

Spirit Level Film has produced a series of interviews about prominent politicians and their leadership qualities entitled The Price of Kings. It has already completed films on Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica.

      Richard Symons, the firm’s founder and director, wants to make Taylor the subject of his next documentary. “It’s very easy to be seduced into thinking this is about a convicted war criminal, but it’s about access to information that is of value to the public.

      It’s about what is in the best interest of a democracy, in learning about the quality of the leader we should be looking for. It’s about access to knowledge and whether we deem that to be of public interest or not.” In a letter to the MoJ, lawyers for Spirit Level say that other leaders, including Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, had agreed to participate in future films. “Face-to-face interviews are a crucial element of the films, as the demeanour of the leader under questioning reveals characteristics which can otherwise be missed. The purpose of the films is to allow the viewers to learn about how power works and how it goes wrong,” the letter explains.

      It points to the complexity of Taylor’s electoral appeal, citing his 1997 campaign under the slogan ‘He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him’. The election was overseen by the UN and resulted in him winning a landslide victory.

      Symons said: “We want to educate the public about the qualities of leadership, how character traits feed into decisions.”

      Gavin Millar QC, who is considering a legal challenge of the MoJ’s refusal on Spirit Level’s behalf, said: “Albert Speer [Hitler’s armaments minister] gave a lot of time to talk to journalists such as Gitta Sereny [for her biography of him]. In the modern era we would expect a camera to be there. It’s a speaking record. Taylor did give evidence at his trial, but this would be in a different context.”

      The MoJ, however, rejected the film-makers’ arguments. In its letter, it states that regulations do not “contemplate that visits will be permitted solely to enable prisoners to contribute to political or general debates”.

      It continues: “There would be a high level of distress and anger from victims [or relatives of victims] of his crimes if the interview were … broadcast.”

      Filmed prison interviews have been permitted before. Following a protracted court case, the BBC was allowed in 2012 to interview Babar Ahmad, a terrorism suspect who at that stage had been held in prison for seven years without trial and was facing extradition to the US.

      The application to interview Taylor has also focused attention on the detention conditions of the former African leader, who has applied to be transferred from Frankland prison in Durham to Rwanda so he can serve his sentence closer to his home and family. Other defendants convicted by the Sierra Leone tribunal are serving their sentences in Rwanda.

      John Jones QC, Taylor’s lawyer, confirmed that his client had agreed to be interviewed after Spirit Level Film approached him. It was not, he added, “something he had actively sought out”.

      Tamsin Allen, Spirit Level Film’s solicitor, said: “It can’t be that interviews are only allowed when prisoners are raising allegations of miscarriages of justice. There’s provision in the MoJ’s own policy documents for other public interest reasons. There’s also an obligation under Article 10 [of the European convention on human rights] to allow freedom of expression.”

      A spokesperson for the MoJ said: “We have received the application and it was considered in accordance with the relevant prison service policy. It is not appropriate to comment further at this stage.”

      According to MoJ policy, journalists may have access to prisoners on only two grounds: either if it relates to highlighting an alleged miscarriage of justice, or if “there is some other sufficiently strong public interest in the issue sought to be raised during the visit and the assistance of that journalist is needed”.