While he did not express remorse or acknowledge wrongdoing, he asked the judges to decide his sentence in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution," The Associated Press reported.
In 1998, the campaign it helped orchestrate for the release of General Pinochet had a clever slogan – "reconciliation not retribution" – but also internal tensions.
As the UN prepared to evacuate refugees from the capital, Monrovia, Mr Taylor's "special emissary" tried to negotiate a process of "national reconciliation" without retribution.
The court should deliver its sentence in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution", said Taylor, who offered no admission of wrongdoing or words of remorse.
CHARLES TAYLOR, the former Liberian president, has been sentenced to 50 years in jail after judges at an international court in The Hague chose to ignore his plea for a sentence in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution".
Still, the human rights topic presents an issue of legitimacy for the clerical ruling class, whose members struggle to reconcile the traditional reading of Sharia with modern legal norms emphasizing reconciliation over retribution.
With the case, the inevitable questions arise for Italy, similar to those that have long burdened countries from Germany to South Africa: What should the nation seek, reconciliation or retribution?
The convicted war criminal and former Liberian president Charles Taylor has told judges at his sentencing hearing he sympathises with victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone he helped foment, and urged them to decide their sentence against him in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution".
But Mr Mandela's symbolic role was hard to exaggerate.His greater achievement was to see the need for reconciliation, to forswear retribution and then to act as midwife to a new, democratic South Africa, built on the rule of law.
But Mr Mandela's symbolic role was hard to exaggerate.His greater achievement, though, was to see the need for reconciliation, to forswear retribution and then to act as midwife to a new, democratic South Africa built on the rule of law.
