Liberia's back-to-back civil wars, notorious for their brutality and use of child soldiers, left an estimated 250,000 people dead in the west African country between 1989 and 2003.
The first war started in 1989 when politician and warlord Charles Taylor launched a rebellion to oust the military regime of president Samuel Doe, who was mutilated and then murdered in a gruesome execution filmed by his killers a year later.
Taylor was elected the country's leader in 1997 after a peace deal. Within two years a rebellion had erupted against his authoritarian rule, backed by neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone where he supported rebels.
The second conflict from 1999 to 2003 ended with Taylor fleeing to Nigeria and an interim government taking over until economist Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female leader, was elected in 2005.
Many of those in charge during the wars still hold positions of political and economic influence in the country.
- Long wait for justice -
A truth and reconciliation commission was set up in 2006 to probe crimes committed during the wars, but its recommendations -- including barring Johnson Sirleaf from office -- went largely unimplemented, in the name of keeping the peace.
Taylor was convicted by a Dutch-based international criminal court in 2012 of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity -- albeit not in Liberia but in Sierra Leone.
He is serving out his 50-year sentence in Britain.
While nobody has been prosecuted in Liberia for crimes committed during the wars, some suspects who fled to Europe have been prosecuted there under the universal justice principle.
In 2021, ex-rebel commander Alieu Kosiah was handed 20 years in jail in Switzerland for war crimes in Liberia. An appeals court upheld the sentence on Thursday, saying he was also guilty of the most serious charge of crimes against humanity.
In 2022, another former rebel commander, Kunti Kamara, received a life sentence in France for violence against civilians and complicity in crimes against humanity.
