By Michelle Faul
Freetown, Sierra Leone - Charles Taylor's spiritual adviser said the Liberian warlord facing trial for crimes against humanity told him in a telephone call from jail late on Sunday that Nigerian security forces had encouraged him to flee his home-in-exile last week, and that he felt betrayed by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.
"They said 'you get on and go' and they left him behind," Indian evangelist Kilari Anand Paul told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Houston, Texas.
Nigeria vehemently denied the allegation.
"He (Taylor) should stop telling tales. The story is a far-fetched figment of his jaundiced imagination," Femi Fani-Kayode, a spokesperson for the Nigerian leader, told The Associated Press.
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"He must have been reading too many James Bond novels."
Many were suspicious when Nigeria's government announced Taylor's "disappearance" a week ago on Monday, just days after Obasanjo reluctantly agreed to hand him over from the exile haven he had been offered under an internationally brokered peace agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war.
For two days, Nigeria had resisted calls from the United States, human rights organisations and others to arrest Taylor to ensure that he would stand trial before a war tribunal in Sierra Leone, where he is to officially be charged on Monday afternoon.
Some questioned the timing of Taylor's capture - within 24 hours after Obasanjo had left for a trip to the US, after the White House had suggested he would not be meeting with President George Bush unless he could answer questions about Taylor's vanishing act.
Diplomats and Nigerian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity suggested Taylor had been allowed to flee.
Paul said Taylor told him in a telephone conversation from jail on Saturday that Nigerian security agents came with two vehicles to his villa in the southern coastal town of Calabar that Monday night, March 28. Taylor and five or six people in his entourage were ordered into the lead vehicle, and security agents followed in the second, Paul said. - Sapa-AP
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