Heads Of State Pursued By International Courts.

International Criminal Court (ICC) logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Liberian former leader Charles Taylor awaits a verdict Thursday on charges of arming Sierra Leone's rebels in return for "blood diamonds" in the 1990s.
Below is a list of heads of state around the world facing the international justice system.
- CHARLES TAYLOR: The former Liberian president, who ruled from 1997-2003, was charged in March 2003 with war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the 1991-2001 civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Taylor stands accused of arming, training and controlling Sierra Leone's notorious Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.
Elected president in 1997, Taylor resigned in August 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria where he was arrested in March 2006.
Hearings on his case started in June 2007 before the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, and ran until March 2011.

- LAURENT GBAGBO: The former Ivory Coast president was arrested in April 2011, and was transferred to the International Criminal Court's (ICC's) detention unit in The Hague on November 30 last year under an arrest warrant issued by the court. He is currently facing charges of crimes against humanity following the unrest which rocked the country between December 2010 and April 2011, after he refused to concede defeat in elections to current president Alassane Ouattara. Some 3,000 died in the unrest.

- OMAR AL-BASHIR: The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir, the current president of Sudan, in March 2009. The charges relate to alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur, the country's western region. In July 2010 the court added genocide to the charges.
The conflict in Darfur, which started in 2003, has left 300,000 dead, according to the UN, 10,000 according to the Sudanese government, which Bashir continues to lead.

- MOAMER KADHAFI: The former Libyan leader, killed by rebels on October 20, 2011, had been sought by the ICC under a warrant issued in June 2011.
Kadhafi was wanted for crimes against humanity committed on his behalf by the country's security forces as they put down a popular revolt, which turned into a civil war and ended with his ousting.

- SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Elected president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in July 1997, Slobodan Milosevic was indicted in May 1999 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia between 1991 and 1999.
He resigned the presidency in October 2000 following an election defeat, and was arrested in April 2001.
A long-running trial was brought to a sudden end in March 2006 by Milosevic's death in his cell in The Hague.

- MILAN MILUTINOVIC: The president of Serbia from December 1997 to December 2002, Milutinovic was indicted by the ICTY in May 1999 and surrendered to the tribunal in January 2003. He was acquitted in February 2009 of war crimes committed in Kosovo following a trial that started in July 2006. 

- KHIEU SAMPHAN: Former Cambodian head of state Khieu Samphan was arrested in 2007 and charged with genocide by a UN court in December 2009. He had already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as a key member of the central committee of the Khmer Rouge regime that oversaw the deaths of up to two million people by starvation, overwork, torture and execution. He went on trial in November 2011 at Cambodia's UN-backed court.