The UK government has confirmed former Liberian president Charles Taylor will serve his 50-year sentence for war crimes in a British prison.

Taylor, 65, was found guilty in 2012 of aiding and abetting war crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, which sat in The Hague, found him responsible for atrocities including murder, slavery and rape.

As part of a deal to bring him to justice, the British government had offered to jail him in Britain if he was found guilty and sentenced.

Britain will also bear the costs of accommodating him.

UK justice minister Jeremy Wright described Taylor's conviction as a landmark moment for international justice.

"It clearly demonstrates that those who commit atrocities will be held to account and that no matter their position they will not enjoy impunity," he said.

But the justice ministry refused to disclose which jail would house the former strongman. Taylor is currently being held at the UN's detention unit in The Hague.

His landmark sentence - on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity - was the first handed down by an international court against a former head of state since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.

He had been arrested in 2006 and sentenced at The Hague last year for "some of the most heinous crimes in human history".

Taylor 'would prefer jail in Rwanda than in Britain'

As Liberia's president from 1997 to 2003, Taylor supplied guns and ammunition to rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone in a conflict notorious for its mutilations, drugged child soldiers, and sex slaves, judges said.

He had maintained his innocence throughout the seven-year case, in a trial which heard evidence from witnesses including actress Mia Farrow and supermodel Naomi Campbell.

They told of a gift of diamonds believed to have been given by Taylor in 1997.

Taylor's lawyer Morris Anyah had suggested after his final appeal was rejected last month, that the former west African strongman would prefer to go to Rwanda to be closer to his family.

His British imprisonment "will leave Charles Taylor more isolated from his family, friends and broader support structures than would have been the case had he been ordered to serve out his sentence in Rwanda," Mr Anyah said.

"So it is yet another disappointment in a case with a long line of them for the defence," he said via email.

ABC/AFP