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Former Liberian Vice-President Jewel Howard-Taylor has been released from detention and placed under house arrest, a lawyer said Saturday, days after she was charged with involvement in an international drug-trafficking network.
Howard-Taylor, 63, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, was charged last Wednesday. Currently a member of the opposition party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), she was placed in pre-trial detention on Tuesday.
Her arrest came amid a government crackdown on drug trafficking, following several major cocaine busts in recent months.
A human rights lawyer told AFP on Saturday that she had been released “on compassionate grounds”.
Earlier, her aides posted on Facebook that she was at home with her family. Conditions of her release included the surrender of all travel documents.
West Africa is a transit point for cocaine, mainly produced in Latin America and shipped to consumer countries in Europe, according to monitors.
Howard-Taylor’s warlord ex-husband is currently serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British jail.
His conviction was, however, for funding rebel groups in Sierra Leone, not for the recruitment of child soldiers, killings, rape and pillaging of which he is accused at home. He denied the accusations.
