World: Former Liberia VP released from jail pending trial

 ________________ 

MONROVIA — Former Liberian vice president Jewel Howard-Taylor, who had been jailed ahead of her trial for alleged involvement in an international drug trafficking network, has been released and placed under house arrest, a lawyer told AFP on Saturday.

Howard-Taylor, 63, the ex-wife of former rebel leader Charles Taylor, president from 1997 to 2003, was charged last Wednesday.

Currently a member of an opposition party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), she was placed in pre-trial detention Tuesday.

Her arrest came amid a government crackdown on drug trafficking, following several major cocaine busts in recent months.

A human rights lawyer told AFP on Saturday that she had been released “on compassionate grounds”. Earlier, her aides posted on Facebook that she was at home with her family.

Conditions of her release included the surrender of all travel documents.

Howard-Taylor served as vice president from 2018 to 2024 under president George Weah. She also served as an influential senator from 2006 to 2018.

West Africa is a transit point for cocaine produced in Latin America and shipped to consumer countries in Europe, according to monitors.

Howard-Taylor’s warlord ex-husband is currently serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British jail.

His conviction was, however, for funding rebel groups in Sierra Leone, not the recruitment of child soldiers, killings, rape and pillaging of which he is accused at home.