Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (b.1948) was a Liberian political figure who acted as President of Liberia from 1997 until 2003. Trained as a guerrilla fighter in Libya in the 1980s, he led the National Patriotic Front of Liberia in the First Liberian Civil War (1989-96). As a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2002), Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Losing control of Liberia during the Second Civil War, he went into exile in Nigeria in 2003 and was later detained by UN authorities before being sentenced to 50 years in prison by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.