Toussaint Kluiters / Pool via AP

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor waits to be sentenced at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague on Wednesday.

THE HAGUE -- Judges at the international war crimes court sentenced former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 50 years in prison on Wednesday, saying he was responsible for "some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history."

He had been convicted of supporting rebels in Sierra Leone who murdered and mutilated thousands during their country's brutal civil war in return for blood diamonds.

Ex-Liberia President Charles Taylor guilty in 'watershed' war-crimes case

The Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty last month on 11 charges of aiding and abetting the rebels who went on a bloody rampage during the decade-long war that ended in 2002 with more than 50,000 dead.

Presiding Judge Richard Lussick says the crimes Taylor was convicted of were of the "utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality."

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"The lives of many more innocent civilians in Sierra Leone were lost or destroyed as a direct result of his actions," Lussick said.

Taylor showed no emotion as Lussick handed down what will effectively be a life sentence. 

The 64-year-old warlord-turned-president is the first former head of state convicted by an international war crimes court since World War II.

'In a class of his own'
Prosecutors had asked judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone to impose an 80-year sentence; Taylor's lawyers urged judges to hand down a sentence that offered him some hope of release before he dies.

Lussick said an 80-year sentence would have been excessive as Taylor was convicted of aiding and abetting crimes and not direct involvement. 

But the judge added that Taylor was "in a class of his own" compared to others convicted by the United Nations-backed court. 

"The special status of Mr. Taylor as a head of state puts him in a different category of offenders for the purpose of sentencing," Lussick said.  

At a sentencing hearing earlier this month, Taylor expressed "deepest sympathy" for the suffering of victims of atrocities in Sierra Leone, but insisted he had acted to help stabilize the West Africa region and claimed he never knowingly assisted in the commission of crimes.

"What I did...was done with honor," he said. "I was convinced that unless there was peace in Sierra Leone, Liberia would not be able to move forward."

However, judges ruled that Taylor armed and supplied the rebels in full knowledge they would likely use weapons to commit terrible crimes, in exchange for payments of "blood diamonds" often obtained by slave labor.

Prosecutors said there was no reason for leniency, given the extreme nature of the crimes, Taylor's "greed" and misuse of his position of power.

"The purposely cruel and savage crimes committed included public executions and amputations of civilians, the display of decapitated heads at checkpoints, the killing and public disembowelment of a civilian whose intestines were then stretched across the road to make a check point, public rapes of women and girls, and people burned alive in their homes," prosecutor Brenda Hollis wrote in a brief appealing for the 80-year sentence.

Taylor stepped down and fled into exile in Nigeria after being indicted by the court in 2003. He was finally arrested and sent to the Netherlands in 2006.

While the Sierra Leone court is based in that country's capital, Freetown, Taylor's trial is being staged in Leidschendam, a suburb of The Hague, for fear holding it in West Africa could destabilize the region. 

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 8:01 a.m. ET: THE HAGUE -- In a historic ruling, a U.N.-backed court on Thursday convicted ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes during a conflict that left 50,000 dead.

Taylor, 64, was charged with murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. However, the court found him guilty of only some of the charges.

Taylor is the first head of state convicted by an international court since the post-World War II Nuremberg military tribunal.

The tribunal found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity by supporting notoriously brutal rebels in return for "blood diamonds."

Presiding Judge Richard Lussick said the warlord-turned-president provided arms, ammunition, communications equipment and planning to rebels responsible for countless atrocities in the 1991-2002 Sierra Leone civil war. Lussick called the support "sustained and significant."

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Taylor stood and showed no emotion as Lussick delivered the guilty verdicts at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

While judges convicted him of aiding and abetting atrocities by rebels, they cleared him of direct command responsibility, saying he had no direct control over the rebels he supported.

Lussick scheduled a sentencing hearing for May 16 and said sentence would be passed two weeks later.

The Associated Press reported that thousands celebrated in Sierra Leone after learning that Taylor had been convicted. Countless survivors of the civil war bear emotional and physical scars from the war. Rebels hacked off the limbs of many of their victims.

Human rights advocates say the case is a reminder that even the most powerful do not enjoy impunity.

Taylor, who was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, was accused of backing and giving orders to Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in the 11-year civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone.

'Murder and mayhem'
The prosecution alleged the RUF undermined a ceasefire agreement in 1999, prolonging the war for another three years, and that Taylor financed their war effort with the proceeds of "blood diamonds" mined illegally in Sierra Leone.

"The Taylor verdict is a watershed moment," Richard Dekker, head of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said before the tribunal announced its decision. "As president, Taylor is believed to have been responsible for so much murder and mayhem which unfolded in Sierra Leone. His was a shadow that loomed across the region, in the Ivory Coast, in Sierra Leone and Liberia."

Issouf Sanogo / AFP - Getty Images, file

A young Revolutionary United Front (RUF) fighter poses near Freetown, Sierra Leone, on May 25, 1997.

Taylor denied all of the charges.

The crimes of the RUF were not in doubt. Courts have earlier convicted RUF fighters of crimes against humanity, including rape, torture and terrorism.

Civilians were mutilated during the conflict, their arms being cut off above the hand (known by fighters as "long sleeves") or above the elbow ("short sleeves").

Pregnant women shot
Trial witnesses described seeing children and pregnant women being shot, disemboweled or mutilated in a process aimed at creating terror in the civilian population.

But the challenge was to link Taylor to these crimes.

"The accused never set foot in Sierra Leone when these crimes were being committed. He never directly, physically committed these crimes," Brenda Hollis, the court's chief prosecutor, told Reuters before the verdict.

"In a domestic case, you have to prove there was a murder, we have the added level of proving linkage."

This was the reason the supermodel Naomi Campbell was summoned to give testimony to the court in 2010.

The prosecution alleged Taylor had sent uncut diamonds to her hotel room after a dinner given by former South African president Nelson Mandela, attended by both her and Taylor. She told the court she had no idea who had sent her the diamonds, which she called "dirty little pebbles."

Taylor is likely to appeal, meaning the trial could easily last for another six months.

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Taylor is expected to serve time in a British maximum security prison. That will contrast sharply with the comparatively luxurious life Taylor enjoys in detention in The Hague. His case was moved there because of fears that his security could not be guaranteed in Sierra Leone.

In The Hague, Taylor has been free to mix with his fellow inmates and he has maintained "cordial" relations with his old enemy Laurent Gbagbo, the former Ivory Coast leader who faces charges of crimes against humanity.

Taylor has also been known to cook and compare defense briefs with Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.

As he awaited the verdict, he immersed himself in study of the Jewish faith, to which he converted before arriving in The Hague. He has regular visits from a rabbi and does not receive his lawyers on the Sabbath.

The Associated Press, Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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