Author: Prue Clarke

By Anthony Stephens with New Narratives Liberian human rights advocates have told a US Congressional committee that it is crucial that the US government take the lead in funding war and economic crimes courts for Liberia. The advocates, including Dr. Alan White, a former chief investigator of the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, Elizabeth Evenson, Director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, and Adama Dempster, of the Civil Society Human Rights Advocacy Platform of Liberia, said such a move was critical to finally ending the culture of impunity in Liberia. “We request the international community, including the…

By Mustapha K Darboe with The Republic/New Narratives Gambian lawmakers have passed two legal instruments seeking to establish a special court, a criminal division within the country’s court system, and office of a special prosecutor to try human rights violations under the 22-year rule of former dictator Yahya Jammeh. The 2019 Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, established by the government which investigated Jammeh’s human rights violations, accused the former leader of close to 200 unlawful killings, mainly carried out by members of a death squad called the Junglers. The Commission recommended Jammeh and other top officials to be tried for…

By Eric Opa Doue with New Narratives YARPAH TOWN, River Cess–Betty Miller is a single mother of six children aged six to 13. She is also a farmer, one of many here have struggled to feed and educate their children in the past four years because of poor harvests. Miller says her three oldest children dropped out of school because she could not pay the fees. The three others are in school, from kindergarten to grade three. “I was used to make farm to send the children to school, but now when I make the farm no good thing…

By Nemenlah Cyrus Harmon with New Narratives WHEIN TOWN, Paynesville City- Last year John F. B. Flumo’s dream of educating the children of this community died. Toxic gases and smoke coming from the neighboring Whein Town landfill had been pouring into the Liberate African Rescue Mission School which he has been operating since 2013 making children and teachers sick. By the start of the 2023 school year he knew he had no choice but to shut down. The school – made up of makeshift classrooms – operated up to junior high level and had 50 students enrolled. “I can’t keep…

Video by Eric Opa Doue with New Narratives

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh with New Narratives PARIS, France – An appeal court here has upheld the 2022 conviction of Kunti Kamara, a former commander of the Ulimo rebel group, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Lofa County during Liberia’s first civil war. The court, of three judges and nine jurors, delivered the final verdict Wednesday evening following more than eight hours of deliberations. In the French judicial system the jury needed to have an innate belief in Kamara’s guilt to convict. A simple majority of jurors – seven of the 12 – needed to find him…

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh with New Narratives PARIS, France – As the appeal of a former commander of the rebel group Ulimo, of his 2022 war crimes conviction enters its final days, defense lawyers for Kunti Kamara called on the three judge panel and nine jurors to overturn the conviction saying there is a lack of evidence Kamara committed the crimes. According to Kamara’s lawyers, his earlier sentence of life imprisonment should not be upheld because the evidence provided by prosecutors and civil parties is largely based on the unreliable testimonies of victims and witnesses from events that happened…

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh and Prue Clarke with New Narratives PARIS, France – In a wandering, combative and, at times angry, testimony convicted warlord Alieu Kosiah laid out an argument that he and his former Ulimo ally Kunti Kamara, whose appeal of his 2022 war crimes conviction was the forum for Thursday’s appearance, were innocent. Kosiah was convicted of multiple war crimes in a Swiss court in 2021. His 2023 appeal upheld those convictions and added crimes against humanity convictions. Kosiah is serving a 20-year prison sentence but could be released as early as 2027 with good behaviour. Kosiah announced…

The Paris Palace of Justice, hosting Kunti Kamara’s appeal of his 2022 war crimes conviction By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh and Prue Clarke with New Narratives PARIS, France – Convicted war criminal Kunti Kamara lashed out at the plaintiffs and witnesses who have testified him here in week two of his appeal of his 2022 conviction for crimes against humanity. Kamara, who was convicted of 11 counts of atrocities committed in Lofa County as a commander of the Ulimo rebel group including rape, cannibalism, torture, murder and forced labor, claimed he didn’t know any of the witnesses. “I don’t know them.…

PARIS, France – Witnesses from Foya in Lofa County gave the court hearing former rebel leader Kunti Kamara’s appeal of his 2022 war crimes conviction a deeper sense of the terror and chaos that his group, Ulimo, rained down on the town during the rebel group’s occupation in 1993. On Tuesday the court heard that after Ulimo had destroyed the county’s referral hospital, raped and murdered dozens of citizens including chopping open a schoolteacher’s chest with an axe and eating his heart, dozens of men were forced to carry parts of the town’s power station across the border to Guinea.…