Profile: Charles Taylor, from president to prisoner

In 2003, dressed in white and backed by a gospel choir, Charles Taylor brought down the curtain on his bloody and chaotic rule in Liberia and vowed: "I'll be back."

It is unlikely that he envisioned the manner of his return last week: as a prisoner in a UN aircraft, the world's third most wanted man and facing possible life imprisonment for a catalogue of alleged war crimes.

The Baptist preacher was immediately transferred by helicopter from Monrovia, the Liberian capital, to Sierra Leone. His mere presence in Liberia, which he left bankrupt and starving, is inflammatory and he retains fearsome support among those who know him simply as Pappy.

Born in 1948 into a line of Americo-Liberians, the elite descendents of the freed slaves who founded the country a century before, Charles Ghankay Taylor enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Arthington, a riverside town on the outskirts of Monrovia.

His mercurial quest for power and money began after he moved to Massachusetts in the 1970s to study economics. Inspired by Marxist ideologies he became a vocal activist against the westernisation of Africa.

A powerful and charismatic speaker, Mr Taylor once outshone William R Tolbert, Liberia's then president, in a debate in the US. His passion and connections were recognised by Samuel Doe, who succeeded as Liberia's first indigenous president following the assassination of Tolbert, who was stabbed 15 times after a military coup in 1980.

Mr Taylor was invited to run the General Services Agency, controlling much of Liberia's budget, but was forced to flee back to the US in 1983 after being accused of embezzling.

He was arrested a year later but mysteriously managed to escape from prison: one popular story has the future leader sawing through the bars of a laundry room window and dropping 15ft on knotted sheets.

Mr Taylor managed to avoid recapture in America - fuelling theories that the CIA colluded in his escape - and flew to Libya, where he eventually surfaced at a guerrilla training camp sponsored by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

It was while in Libya that Mr Taylor forged a relationship with Foday Sankoh, the ruthless leader of the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel movement whose goal was to overthrow the government of Sierra Leone by any means.

The RUF became notorious for its brutality and its recruitment of children: boys as young as 8 were made to murder their parents before being indoctrinated as soldiers. Young girls were used as prostitutes.

Mr Taylor relocated to the Ivory Coast and assembled his own army, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), mostly from the persecuted tribes of North Liberia. In 1989, the army launched a coup against Doe's regime, which had become an ethnic dictatorship.

The arrival of Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) troops forced the NPFL to declare a ceasefire before it could take Monrovia. Instead, Mr Taylor formed an alternative national government, based in the town of Gbarnga.

The next few years saw fragmentation of the various armed militia into seven factions fighting for control of diamonds, iron ore and timber. Doe was killed in 1990, a decade after taking power. His ears were chopped off and he was left to bleed to death. The torture was filmed on video.

By 1992 the conflict had developed into a horrific civil war, characterised by rape, massacres, torture and kidnap. Hostilities ceased four years later with the signing of the Ecowas-sponsored Abuja Accord and the NPFL morphed into the National Patriotic Party (NPP), again with Mr Taylor at its head.

In rigged elections the following year, the NPP - standing against Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf - obtained 75 per cent of the vote: this came despite the Mr Taylor's chilling campaign slogan: "He kill my ma, he kill my pa, but I will vote for him." The victory was attributed to the weary nation's terror that he would reignite the civil war if not elected.

Although he had achieved power by legitimate means, Mr Taylor's seven years of presidency were characterised by corruption: natural resources - notably timber - worth millions of dollars were handed out to friends and supporters. Chief among these was Sankoh, with whom he allegedly swapped diamonds for arms to fuel Sierra Leone's conflict.

Liberia's economy collapsed. Rebel armies began amassing on the borders in Guinea and the Ivory Coast to oust Mr Taylor, the man who had promised he would never be a "wicked president".

Mr Taylor's influence began to fade and with the end of the war in Sierra Leone, the NPP became virtually imprisoned in the capital by advancing guerrilla armies. In 2003, he was persuaded to stand down and, with American blessing, accept asylum in Nigeria.

He remained in exile in a seafront villa in the town of Calabar but after Liberia's democratic elections, Ms Johnson-Sirleaf - as newly-elected President - demanded the return of her political rival to stand trial. Nigeria, under intense pressure from the US, eventually agreed.

In his last speech as President in a ceremony at Monrovia's Executive Mansion, Mr Taylor told his supporters: "History will be kind to me. I have fulfilled my duties." The accuracy of this prediction is now a matter for the international courts.