Charles Taylor appeals war crimes sentence The historic sentence was the first handed down against a former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946. Prosecutors, who declined to comment ahead of the hearing, are to argue that trial judges made a mistake by only convicting Taylor of aiding and abetting the notorious Revolutionary United Front and other rebel groups. In one of four grounds of appeal, they said the court should have convicted Taylor for actively issuing orders to the RUF and its ally, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). "The appropriate sentence should have been 80 years in order to reflect the totality of his overall conduct and culpability," prosecutors insisted. Taylor's defence has filed 42 grounds of appeal, calling the trial chamber's decision a "miscarriage of justice," and asked appeals judges to reverse the conviction and quash the sentence. "The colossal judgement, over 2,500 pages in length, is plagued throughout by internal inconsistencies, misstatements of evidence and conflicting findings," Taylor's lawyer Morris Anyah said in court papers. Taylor, said Anyah, "was never in Sierra Leone when these crimes were committed" and furthermore he was so "engulfed at the time in many other domestic issues that it was not possible for him to be leading rebels in other countries to fight wars." Appeals judges are expected to have a decision by September, SCSL spokesman Solomon Moriba said, with the ex-Liberian president remaining behind bars at the UN's detention unit in The Hague until appeals proceedings are finalised. If his appeal fails, Taylor will serve his sentence in a British jail.