At the International Criminal Court, former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo is in jail awaiting trial for crimes he allegedly committed while clinging to power in his country.

The same court has indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir of genocide in Darfur and last year charged Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi with crimes against humanity as he resorted to murdering and persecuting civilians to put down protests against his regime.

“The Special Court’s judgment in the Taylor trial will be a watershed moment regardless of the verdict,’’ said Elise Keppler, international justice senior counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Those implicated in the gravest crimes, even at the highest echelons of power, are being held to account.’’

Prosecutors cast Taylor, 64, as a ruthless leader who as president of neighboring Liberia funneled weapons, ammunition and other equipment to Sierra Leone rebels in return for diamonds mined by slave laborers in Sierra Leone.

The rebels from the Revolutionary United Front and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, groups notorious for hacking off limbs, noses and lips of their enemies. Most of their surviving leaders already have been convicted and imprisoned by the court.

In seven months on the witness stand testifying in his own defense, Taylor portrayed himself as a statesman and regional peacemaker.

Attempts to link Taylor to blood diamonds generated the trial’s most publicized witness — supermodel Naomi Campbell, who testified she had been given diamonds at a party in South Africa, but did not directly link them to Taylor as prosecutors had hoped.

The verdict will end another chapter in the checkered life of Taylor who was born in Liberia, studied economics in the United States, escaped from a Massachusetts jail after being charged with embezzlement, formed a notorious Liberian rebel group and later was elected president in his homeland.