Author: Anthony Stephens

MONROVIA — A second plaintiff has told the Swiss court hearing the appeal proceedings of Alieu Kosiah, the Liberian warlord challenging his 20-year sentence for war crimes, that Kosiah’s allies beat and intimidated him for testifying against Kosiah in 2021.

Editor’s note: The story has been corrected to reflect that Paula Sallinen, Massaquoi’s defense lawyer, said the case was skewed against her client because Finnish police promised not to investigate Liberians who may have been responsible for the crimes. Sallinen did not say Liberian police covered up the role of Liberians. FPA/NN regret the error. MONROVIA – Witness tampering has been the focus of the first hearings in the appeal of the acquittal of Gibril Massaquoi, the former commander with the Revolutionary United Front, accused by Finnish prosecutors of committing atrocities in Liberia during the country’s civil wars.

MONROVIA — A Monrovia court has sentenced Arthur Chan-Chan, a former agent of the National Security Agency, to 25 years in prison for human trafficking—the highest penalty yet for a convict of the crime in Liberia. The longest sentence until now was 20 years – following Liberia’s revision of the trafficking law making the minimum sentence for trafficking 20 years.

MONROVIA, Liberia – A former agent of the National Security Agency has been found guilty of human trafficking, becoming the first person with a direct link to the Liberian government to be convicted of the charge. Following a landmark trial ten of the twelve jurors in the case at Criminal Court “A” said they agreed with state prosecutors that Arthur Chan-Chan had committed the crime. After the verdict Judge Roosevelt Willie ordered the probation office at the Justice Ministry to submit Chan-Chan’s pre-sentence report to him next Wednesday. The report on Chan-Chan’s background from his family, friends, ex-workmates, and neighbors…

In part three of this three-part series Anthony Stephens looks at the Liberian government’s efforts to get tough on human trafficking. In September 2021 the Liberian government sent a signal it was getting tough on human trafficking. The Legislature passed a revision to a 2005 law increasing the prison sentence for anyone found guilty of all forms of sex and labor trafficking to a minimum of 20 years. It had previously been one year.