What is wrong with terrifying people with skulls?

Times:

Displaying human skulls at roadblocks was an effective method of encouraging people to obey soldiers’ orders, Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President, said yesterday at his war crimes trial.

Mr Taylor, giving evidence in his defence, insisted that he saw nothing wrong with using the skulls of his enemies during his coup in Liberia, but insisted that testimony given earlier this year that soldiers under his command strung human entrails across the road, was a lie.

The first African leader to face trial in The Hague told the court on the third day of his testimony that he took a tough line with those who committed atrocities and had some perpetrators executed.

Mr Taylor faces 11 charges of murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers, enslavement and pillaging while allegedly masterminding the brutal 11-year civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

“Skulls were used as symbols of death,” he told the judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone . “These were not our people. Enemy soldiers had been killed and their skulls were used. We did not think that symbol was anything wrong. I did not order them removed.”

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There was a death penalty at traffic stops? That sounds like pretty harsh traffic control. This guy probably did worse. He is a man without a conscience.