PARIS, France – The first Liberian victims, who are part of the case against convicted war criminal Kunti Kamara, testified today in Kamara’s appeal of his 2022 conviction. Last week the witnesses were made up of experts, journalists and investigators, designed to give the jury – made up of three judges and nine French civilians – context they need to understand the chaos of Lofa County during the war in 1993.

By Evelyn Kpadeh Seagbeh and Prue Clarke

Now the court will hear from the victims directly. The first woman, who came from Lofa to testify in both trials, was the wife of a schoolteacher who was tortured and murdered by Ulimo in 1993. The witness gave the court disturbing testimony about her husband’s murder and the kidnapping and rape of her 13-year-old daughter by Ulimo. She said that she and her husband and six children were hiding in the bush, like thousands of families from the town of Foya, after the Ulimo rebels had taken the town from the rebels of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front for Liberia (NPFL) which had terrorized the area for more than a year.

The witness said her husband volunteered to go into the town to find food. When he didn’t come back after a few days, she went out herself leaving her children alone. A few days later when their mother did not return, the eldest daughter, 13, went out to look for food and was kidnapped by Ulimo. The woman later heard that her husband was tortured, murdered and his body parts eaten, and the daughter was gang raped.

“They cut here,” she said pointing to her upper leg and her upper arm, “and they put it in the pan. Then they open the chest. They take whatsoever they want, they put it in the pan, and they eat it.”

Later in the day another witness said he was with the schoolteacher husband when he died. He said the schoolteacher had translated for visiting “white people” from an international NGO telling them that Ulimo had destroyed the hospital. He said Ulimo later detained the schoolteacher in retaliation for telling the NGOs they were responsible. (The names of all witnesses are being withheld to protect them from credible fears of retaliation.)

The man, one of eight Liberian “civil parties” in the case testified that he had witnessed the torture and murder of the schoolteacher at the hands of a Kamara underling named “Ugly Boy”.

“[He] was no longer a normal person because of the tension he was under,” the witness told the trial of the schoolteacher. The schoolteacher had been held in the torture known as “tarbay” – with his elbows tied behind his back, for three days. Then, “all of them beat on him, so much, everywhere. I remember then, Ugly Boy hit on him with the axe and he pulled out his organs. You would not believe it. I don’t know if they were ritually acting but this man’s heart was pulled out. Ugly Boy got his heart out.”

The witness said the rebels then danced around jubilantly. “Celebrating as if the heart that they pulled out of that man was of no value,” he told the court. Then took the heart to an area outside, cut it into pieces. “That was my first time seeing a human being eating another.”

He listed the rebel leaders he saw eating the heart. He named Kamara – known as “CO. Kundi” and others known as Ugly Boy, Mami Wata, Alieu Kosiah – convicted of war crimes in Switzerland – and others. He said they did it front of the crowd to instill terror in the whole district. He said, as a result, “fear grew up all over.” He told the court of seeing check points made of human intestines and gates guarded by severed human heads, including that of his own relative. “Ugly Boy was one of the most terrible and dangerous people in Foya because he went everywhere with an axe.”

In a dramatic moment the wife of the dead schoolteacher was asked what she expected from the trial.

“I expect for him to say he did it,” the witness told the court.

When given the chance to ask Kamara a question, the victim refused to look at him and asked: “What did my husband do to you that you killed him?”

But she was disappointed.

“I am totally in shock because I have no experience about what all these people are complaining about,” said Kamara. “I don’t know them. I’m totally innocent.”

When asked if he had heard of people taking out hearts of victims and eating them, Kamara did not answer directly.

“Liberia war was anarchy war,” Kamara said. “So many things happened. I cannot prove anything I did not see. I have no experience about that.”

The witness told the court that people took her to what they said was her husband’s grave and they held a memorial for him. With the help of the Red Cross she found her daughter but she said life had been extremely difficult since the death of her husband, the breadwinner of the family.

“He loved me, he provided everything for me,” she said, becoming emotional. “If I see how my children are suffering. They were not able to go to school. They not used to me because I sent them elsewhere. They suffer. If their father were living, the family would all be together.”

The judge asked her if she had heard of other atrocities committed by Ulimo. The witness told them that she had heard of people being thrown into boiling water. She named the commander who had ordered that as Ulimo rebel named Saar Chouie – a Kissi name for Ugly Boy. (Ugly Boy died during the war.)

Kamara, who is 49 according to the birth date he gave to Dutch authorities when he claimed asylum in 2001, has admitted to being a frontline combatant with Ulimo but denies he took part in atrocities against civilians. Today he rocked back and forth in his glass box – put in place to protect him from attacks and prevent him from interacting with the court or victims – during the testimony.

The woman’s daughter, who had been kidnapped at 13, also appeared as a witness. A small, quiet figure dressed for the cold, she told the jury that when she was kidnapped by Ulimo, she was raped by three rebels.

One had a gun to her head. Another held her foot. “When one finished the other would come. That’s how it went,” she said quietly.

After the rape she couldn’t find her family. She made her way to Guinea and then Sierra Leone and, through the Red Cross, she was eventually reunited with her mother. That’s when she heard what had happened to her father. “I have not been able to live in Foya again.”

The rape victim said she had been trying to get treatment for physical injuries but “it has never stopped”. She has not been able to bear children. Doctors told her it is because of the rape. “No solution,” she told the court. She said had never told her husband about the rape because of the shame she felt. She said had only ever talked about it in the court in Paris in this appeal and in the original trial.

“What do you expect from this trial?” the judge asked.

“I need justice,” she said.

The jury was intensely engaged in all the testimony of all three. Many had pained looks on their faces as they heard the stories of graphic violence. The trial continues Tuesday.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.

MONROVIA – The trial of Alieu Kosiah, former United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) commander, has again been postponed by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court.

The trial was initially scheduled to take place in April 2020, in Bellinzona, Switzerland. However, in March 2020, it was postponed by the Court due to the measures imposed by the Swiss authorities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the Court aimed at rescheduling the trial between June and July 2020. As the measures taken globally to combat the pandemic are still affecting international travel and overall logistics required for these legal proceedings, the Court has decided to postpone the trial until the end of 2020, between November and December.

There have been no official dates announced as of yet.

Alieu Kosiah is implicated in the commission or command of war crimes, including acts of sexual violence, murders, cannibalism, recruitment of child soldiers, looting, forcing civilians to work in cruel conditions, and the forced movement of looted goods, weapons and ammunition. Kosiah is the first person to be tried for war crimes in a non-military criminal court in Switzerland, and was the first ULIMO member to be indicted for crimes committed during the First Liberian Civil War.

Civitas Maxima and the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP) understand that the postponement decision was taken by the Federal Criminal Court to allow for such a historic trial to take place in the best and safest circumstances possible.

Monrovia – A picture it is often said, tells a thousand words, it ventures into areas where the vague speculations about the most horrifying experiences become mute at the mere imagery of actions long forgotten.

Report by Rodney D. Sieh, rodney.sieh@frontpageafricaonline.com

“Photography, or to best put it, photojournalism whether motion or still, has made a tremendous impact in terms of aiding investigators and foreign governments in the arrest and effective prosecution of  former rebel commanders and warlords guilty of perpetrating war crimes during Liberia’s bloody  civil wars. 

Certainly, without the use of photographs in most of the proceedings as seen, it could have been far more difficult for investigators of hideous crimes to prosecute these cases for such cases require more than eyewitnesses and only photography can fill that vacuum” – James Fausekoi, Veteran Liberian Photojournalist

James Fausekoi should know

The veteran Liberian photojournalist agrees that for alleged perpetrators of Liberia’s bloody civil war, images in recent months appear to be playing a major role in bringing many former warlords and their associates to book.

Photos Making Impact

Says Fausekoi, who previously worked for both The Inquirer and The Daily Observer prior to exile in the United States, says: “Photography, or to best put it, photojournalism whether motion or still, has made a tremendous impact in terms of aiding investigators and foreign governments in the arrest and effective  prosecution of  former rebel commanders and warlords guilty of perpetrating war crimes during Liberia’s bloody  civil wars.” 

British authorities are urging witnesses to incidents during the first Liberian civil war between 1989 and 1992 – in particular events occurring in Nimba County and Bong County during that period, to contact the Met’s War Crimes Team by emailing: SO15Mailbox.WarCrimesunit@met.police.uk

In the past few years, several key figures from various warring factions have been apprehended on foreign soil.

Martina Johnson, the feared female commander of Charles Taylor’s rebel group had settled in Belgium and had gone under the radar for a long time until she was picked up in September 2014 and booked for war crimes allegedly committed during Liberia’s civil war.

Until her arrest, very few would have imagined that the tall, lanky woman, sporting a yellow pants and a pink Girt Dancing T-Shirt in a now iconic photo on the social medium Facebook was the same one dangling an AK-47 rifle on a bullet-ridden Monrovia street at the height of the civil war.

Until his deportation to Monrovia, George S. Boley, the former leaders of the Liberia Peace Council rebel group had settled in upstate New York with his family, far removed from the haunted memories of war. 

But photographs of him at the height of the civil war with gun-totting lads played a crucial role in bringing him to book.

In 2006, Charles McArthur Emmanuel, also known as Chuckie Taylor, the son of former President Charles Ghankay Taylor was placed under house arrest at the Miami International Airport after flying from his mother’s hometown, Trinidad to Miami,Florida when he was picked up.

He carried a passport that he received after falsifying his father’s name on the application.

He was accused by the Domestic Section of the United States Department of Justice of participating in torture in Liberia.

Chuckie’s trial was the first case where a U.S. citizen was prosecuted under a 1994 law that prohibits American citizens from participating in torture outside of the United States. He has been incarcerated in a Miami prison since 2007.

Chuckie had left the dog days of his father’s war behind and living quietly in Trinidad where few had any knowledge that he had led the dreaded Anti-Terrorist Unit of his father’s government.  

Had it not been for Jusu Sulaiman, a Sierra Leonean refugee who fell prey to Chuckie’s wrath while en route to Freetown on April 22, 1999, perhaps Chuckie would still be a free man.

It was Jusu’s testimony in the case of United States v. Belfast that highlighted the saga.  Jusu explained his encounter with an angry defendant, Roy Belfast Jr., (a k a Charles Taylor Jr., a k a Chucky),  at the border, which proved to be the key piece of evidence that nailed the former President’s son.

Like Chuckie, Martina Johnson’s arrest was also based on a complaint.

In Martina’s case, a complaint was filed on behalf of three victims of an offensive in 1992 known as Operation Octopus.

Swiss Group on Trail of Perpetrators

Civitas Maxima, a Geneva-based legal advocacy organisation which helped bring the case against Ms Johnson, is the same organization that was instrumental in making a case against Agnes Taylor, the former wife of President Taylor.

The group has been working with Liberian non-government organisation Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP) to document the alleged crimes.

Martina is accused of participating directly in the National Patriotic Front’s Operation Octopus, in which many civilians were brutally killed because they were members of ethnic groups, such as the Mandingos and the Krahns, Civitas Maxima said in a statement. 

The Small Boys Unit, made up of child soldiers, took part in the assault – and was one of the rebels’ most feared battalions.

Belgium’s universal jurisdiction law allows the country’s judges to prosecute human rights offences committed anywhere in the world.

Until she was picked up by the Metropolitan Police Service in London and charged last week with torture for her alleged involvement with atrocities committed by her former husband’s rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), during the first Liberian Civil War, Dr. Agnes Taylor was living a quiet life as a lecturer at the London School of Commerce, Coventry.

As many who had forgotten that she was the self-proclaimed “Mother of the Revolution” during the dark days of her husband’s reign in his stronghold of Gbarnga, her iconic photograph in which she is dressed in military wears on the warfront of her former husband’s war, was a painful reminder of what was, even as debates ricochet against the backdrop of her now subtle, quiet life in London.

The former first lady, was charged last Friday with two charges relating to claims that between December 23, 1989, and January 1, 1991, she “intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on an individual in the performance or purported performance of her official duties” in the central Liberian city of Gbarnga.

Litany of Charges on Agnes

Another count relates to the same period and the same allegation, but this time in Gborplay, on the border with Ivory Coast.

The fourth count claims that between the same period, Taylor “agreed with others” on a course of action that “would necessarily amount to or involve the commission of the offence of torture”.

The charges read:

– Agnes Reeves Taylor within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court between the 23rd day of December 1989 and the 1st day of January 1991, in Liberia you agreed with others unknown that a course of conduct would be pursued which, if the agreement was carried out in accordance with those intentions would necessarily amount to or involve the commission of the offence of torture. Contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977;

– Agnes Reeves Taylor within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court between the 23rd day of December 1989 and the 1st day of January 1991, as a public official or person acting in an official capacity together with others unknown at Gbarnga, Liberia, intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on an individual in the performance or purported performance of her official duties. Contrary to Section 134(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988;

– Agnes Reeves Taylor within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court between the 23rd day of December 1989 and the 1st day of January 1991, as a public official or person acting in an official capacity together with others unknown at Gbarnga, Liberia, intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on an individual in the performance or purported performance of her official duties. Contrary to Section 134(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988;

– Agnes Reeves Taylor between the 23rd day of December 1989 and the 1st day of January 1991, as a public official or person acting in an official capacity together with persons unknown at Gborplay, Liberia, intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on an individual in the performance or purported performance of her official duties. Contrary to Section 134(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

Her former husband, who served as President from 1997 to 2003, is currently serving a 50-year sentence in a British jail for his role in the civil war.

British authorities are urging witnesses to incidents during the first Liberian civil war between 1989 and 1992 – in particular events occurring in Nimba County and Bong County during that period, to contact the Met’s War Crimes Team by emailing: SO15Mailbox.WarCrimesunit@met.police.uk

Mohammed Jabateh, who is slated to go on trial in October, was living quietly in East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania before he was arrested and accused of committing or ordering such atrocities as the public raping and sexual enslavement of women and murdering children.

US prosecutors, in an indictment charged that the 49-year-old was a Liberian war criminal known as “Jungle Jabbah.”

He faces fraud and perjury charges stemming from his immigration to the United States in the late 1990s.

Book, Images Nail Jabateh

Jabateh, according to prosecutors, was a high-ranking officer of the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO) and then its splinter group ULIMO-K during the civil war of the early to mid 1990s.

According to the indictment, Jabbateh allegedly “personally committed or ordered ULIMO troops under his command” to commit murder of civilian noncombatants, sexual enslavement of women, public raping of women, maiming of civilian noncombatants, torturing of civilian noncombatants, the enslavement of civilian noncombatants, the conscription of child soldiers, the execution of prisoners of war, the desecration and mutilation of corpses, and the killing of individuals because of race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinion.

Besides photo images, prosecutors are also relying on a 2004 Duke University Press book Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940, and reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, in which journalist Keith Richburg recalled an encounter with Jungle Jabbah in Liberia in 1992: The battalion commander Captain Jungle Jabbah, was dressed in an Operation Desert Storm T-shirt and gold-rimmed sunglasses.

His deputy commander, distinguishable mostly by his tennis shoes and thick dreadlocks, identified himself as Captain Pepper-and-Salt — “because I will peppa’ the enemy,” he explained, waving his AK-47.

Like Jabateh, Alieu Kosiah, was a former commander in the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO).

He was arrested in November 2014 in Switzerland, suspected of crimes committed in Liberia between 1993 and 1995, especially killings targeting civilians in the Lofa district of northwest Liberia.

Kosiah is accused of “ordering his troops to kill civilians, ordering rape and acts aimed at terrorizing the local population and reducing them to slavery,” in Liberia’s northern Lofa.

Swiss authorities had reportedly ordered a criminal investigation into Kosiah who was living quietly in Switzerland.

The ULIMO group was set up to fight a rebel unit headed by warlord-turned-President Charles Taylor, who is currently serving a 50-year jail sentence for aiding and abetting rebels who committed atrocities in neighboring diamond-rich Sierra Leone.

Like the case against Dr. Taylor, Jabateh and Chuckie Taylor, Kosiah’s arrest was also based on a complaint. Seven victims had filed a suit against Kosiah in Switzerland.

The defense association Civitas Maxima said he was arrested in Bern and placed in detention.

While no photographs were involved in the case of Mr. Jucontee Thomas Woewiyu, who served as defense minister of Taylor’s NPFL, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested him at Newark Airport on his return from Liberia and charged him with lying by failing to disclose his alleged affiliation with a “violent political group in Liberia”.

Woewiyu had been living in the United States, and returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Grand Bassa County prior to his arrest.

For many of key perpetrators of violence during the civil war, coming to terms with the reality of recent developments aimed at curbing impunity appears to be a difficult pill to swallow.

While some are pressing to let bygones be bygones, families and friends of victims are welcoming the developments as a long-delayed implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which operated between 2006 and 2009 and tasked with investigating gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law as well as other abuses, including economic crimes, committed between January 1979 and October 14, 2003.

The Commission also had the power to investigate crimes committed prior to 1979 upon applications from individuals or groups.

Interestingly, many of those who are now being brought to book through images of war, were part of The Commission’s final report which recommended that 49 people, including the current President, be banned from political office for their role in the conflict.

The recommendations included the names of over 100 people recommended for prosecution for international crimes.

The report also recommended the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal and a domestic criminal court to prosecute those responsible for atrocities and crimes during the war, the creation of a Reparations Trust Fund, and the promotion of women’s and children’s rights in response to the widespread use of sexual violence and child soldiers.

One of those on the list is Prince Johnson, the leader of the erstwhile Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia responsible for the capture and killing of Samuel Doe.

PYJ Caught on Video

Johnson, who boasted during his appearance before the TRC that he exhumed the body of slain President Doe and cremated it before throwing into the St. Paul River, denies killing innocent people but various images and video captured him killing some innocent Liberians and foreign nationals.

One of those now coming full circle involves the alleged murder of Hladini devi dasi originally named Linda Jury from Michigan, United States.

She was one of the renowned devotees of Hare Krishna. The incident allegedly occurred on October 3, 1990.

This week, FrontPage Africa reported based on a tip from US investigators in Liberia, who are said to be  gathering evidence and taking testimonies from eye witnesses for an indictment that would lead to his arrest.

Johnson is also subject of a video making the rounds on social media on which he is seen interrogating Mrs. Wata Allison, the late wife of the late Defense Minister Gray D. Allison.

On the video Johnson says:

PYJ: “You don’t know me”

Wata Allison: Mr. Johnson, to my holy communion, to my family and children, I took nine months, I do not know anything. It’s just a plot to kill Gray that all those people plotted to kill Gray.

PYJ: You believe!

Wata: I was not here

PYJ: But you heard it?

Wata: But I was sick. I’m trying to say I was not here.

PYJ: Give me my pistol. The man walked to the University campus and killed students with his bodyguards and you still say you don’t know?

Photos Can Fill Vacuum

Johnson, now a Senator from Nimba County demanded an unseen person in the video to bring his pistol, before slapping the late Mrs. Allison, who reportedly died shortly after the interrogation.

Since the release of the TRC report, however, Liberia has been dragging its feet on implementing the findings. But several international war crimes organizations have not.

Organizations like Civitas Maxima that have been involved in all of the arrests so far, have previously expressed skepticism about Liberia’s readiness to bring perpetrators of war to book.

For photojournalist Gregory Stemn, whose photographs have played a key role in nailing down perpetrators and aiding investigators, the atrocities caught on camera are coming home to roost for the perpetrators of war.

“These images of war are really playing a major role and more arrests are on the horizon.

Fausekoi agrees: “Certainly, without the use of photographs in most of the proceedings as seen, it could have been far more difficult for investigators of hideous crimes to prosecute these cases for such cases require more than   eyewitnesses and only photography can fill that vacuum.”

Monrovia – When the United Nations Security Council decided in 2000 that the government of Charles Taylor had been playing a major role in smuggling of diamonds from Sierra Leone, it put in place a travel ban on key officials and associates.

Report by Rodney D. Sieh, rodney.sieh@frontpageafricaonline.com

Three women who had been closed to the former President made the cut: Jewel Howard Taylor, Tupee Enid Taylor and Agnes Taylor. It was the arrest of the latter last week that is causing debate in some quarters.

Taylor, the former President was convicted by an international court of providing weapons and aiding the war in Sierra Leone. He was  sentenced to 50 years in prison.

In an 11-year war that ended in 2002, Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels murdered, raped and mutilated their way across Liberia’s West African neighbour, helped by Taylor as he profited from a trade in so-called blood diamonds.

Three Wives Entangled

Three women who had been closed to the former President made the cut: Jewel Howard Taylor, Tupee Enid Taylor and Agnes Taylor. It was the arrest of the latter last week that is causing debate in some quarters.

Supporters of Dr. Agnes Taylor, listed on the travel ban as “former Liberian Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization, former Senior Member of the Liberian Government and ex-wife and associate of former Liberian President Charles Taylor with ongoing ties to him,” claimed that even though she sported a military outfit on the battlefield, she was not involved in any atrocities.

Jewel Howard Taylor, listed then as “spouse of former Liberian President Charles Taylor with ongoing ties to him, according to family sources, had been estranged from Mr. Taylor since her birth of a child, Philip at 18-years of age for the former President.

She left Liberia at age 21, for the US and returned at 33, in 1997.

Upon her return to Liberia, Taylor who holds a graduate degree in banking and two bachelor’s  in banking and economics, was appointed to a number of positions, including Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Liberia, President of the Agriculture Cooperative and Development Bank (ACDB) and Mortgage Financing Underwriter of the First Union National Bank.

Jewel, currently the senior Senator from Bong County, married to President Taylor in 1997 and became First Lady of Liberia during his presidency.

In 2005, Jewel was elected to the Liberian Senate.

Prior to her election, Jewel filed for divorce, citing her husband’s exile in Nigeria and the difficulty of visiting him due to a UN travel ban on her. 

The divorce was granted in 2006.

Victoria Comes Into Picture

Toward the end of his demise, Taylor met Victoria Addison, a Ghanaian-Tunisian who later became his traditional wife and is recognized today as his only wife.

Victoria has three children, the youngest, Charlie, was born in March 2010. In 2014, Victoria was denied a visa to visit her husband while he serves his sentence in the United Kingdom.

While many regarded Dr. Agnes Reeves-Taylor as the mother of the revolution, no one, not even those closed to Mr. Taylor recalls a wedding – or whether they were ever legally married.

Mr. Taylor’s first legal wife, according to family sources, was Tupee. In fact, it is believed that he was still legally married to Tupee when he met Agnes.

Book Puts Agnes in War Play

But Author Colin M. Waugh, in his book, Charles Taylor and Liberia: Ambition and Atrocity in Africa’s Lone Star State, writes that Taylor “reacquainted with Agnes Reeves with whom he had developed a romantic relationship in the USA since his separation from Tupee.

In 1986, Agnes and Charles were married in a civil ceremony in Accra after which she went to work on her husband’s behalf.”

Waugh, who interviewed Dr. Agnes Taylor for his book reveals that it was she who offered a detailed description of how the late Thomas Sankara was killed.

Waugh writes: “While in Accra, she made a significant contribution by securing an introduction to the ambassador of Burkina Faso, Mamouna Outttara, and thus opened channels to Blaise Compaore in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou.”

Waugh writes that the connection proved crucial when, once again, a few months later, Taylor was detained by the Ghanaian police in connection with alleged subversive activities. Compaore, at the time, the right hand man of Burkina Faso’s President, Thomas Sankara, intervened personally to secure Taylor’s release.”

In 1987, according to Waugh, Taylor moved to Ouagadougou, where he established his base for the next two years. “This departure was a convenient development for the Jerry Rawlings government, which was increasingly on the decline.”

Continued Waugh: “Embarrassed by his presence. Taylor’s revolutionary rhetoric and energetic presence among Ghanaian radical groups had made the Ghanaian authorities increasingly uncomfortable at a time when the Ghanaian economy was on its knees and President Rawlings was trying to restore his country’s standing in the international community. 

While Liberia’s Samuel Doe hot on Taylor’s trail and the USA potential also about to request his handover at any moment, his departure from the country can as a welcome relief to Rawlings.

Other anti-Doe Liberian dissidents migrated to the Burkinabe and training of a rebel movement got underway.”

Waugh writes: On the day of the assassination, a group of Sankara’s own Presidential guards based in Poe, near the Ghanaian border, visited the President to try to persuade him to step aside and allow Campaore to take power.

According to Agnes Taylor’s account, during the ensuing argument, the President drew his gun and shooting broke out, during which Sankara was killed.

Thomas Sankara had not been interested in providing the Liberian dissidents with a base to overthrow Samuel Doe.

However, the pro-Campaore rebels had the backing of Felix Houphouet Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire, who also wanting Doe removed could have supported a plot to remove Sankara. And so it was logical that the NPFL might help Campaore engineer the overthrow.”

Agnes Interrogated by FBI

The author also suggests that Agnes was instrumental in helping her then boyfriend, escape from the prison in Boston.

Waugh writes that Agnes held on to Taylor’s original passport after US authorities seized his diplomatic passport at the time of his detention.

“The FBI interrogated Reeves in Boston right after the breakout, but by then the fugitive was out of the area. Some days later, Ann Payne came up from New York to see Reeves and collected Taylor’s passport for him, thus giving him legitimate documentation for his onward travel.”

According to Waugh, at the Special Court trial in The Hague, the prosecution also tiptoed around the subject of his breakout, not revisiting in detail what could have been an altogether sensitive subject for those most responsible for ensuring that Taylor’s apprehension and trial happened in the first place.

Mr. Taylor himself strongly suggested before the trial that he knew things that could be embarrassing for the USA.”

According to the book, Boima Fahnbulleh, who served as Foreign Minister under Samuel Doe, reportedly was told by Taylor that he had paid his fellow fugitives from Plymouth $50.000 to help get him out and across the border to Mexico.

Agnes Reeves thought that it was Tupee who was supposed to bring the money on the night of the breakout to pass the accomplices.

In response to the allegations that a bribe was paid to arrange for Taylor’s escape, the Special Court defendant again refuted the allegation: I did not pay any money; I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding afterwards.”

Whichever variant of the Plymouth breakout story is true, Waugh writes, “the embarrassment to the US authorities of the successful Taylor escape was not as great as the embarrassment of his continued presence.

As Sheriff Flynn said in March 2000: “They couldn’t ship him back to Liberia because he would have been shot the minute he was on the ground, creating a diplomatic problem.”

In the wake of Agnes’s arrest last week, Liberians both at home and abroad appear divided over the timing.

Some, supporting Dr. Agnes Taylor feel authorities in London should be going after bigger fish to fry. While some say the former first lady was no innocent bystander to her husband’s atrocities and should in fact pay for what she did.

Others are going a step further to ponder why former President Taylor’s other wives are not being brought to book.

TRC Certificate Clears Jewel

While Tupee was questioned, according to Waugh in the aftermath of Mr. Taylor’s escape, Jewel was by his side and was also on the UN travel ban.

But aides to the Senate, coming to her defense says she was cleared by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who gave her a certificate in April 2009, stating that they had no reason to mention her among those listed for committing atrocities against Liberians.

It reads:

This certificate is awarded to you in appreciation of your participation in the TRC Economic Crimes process as set forth in the Act of May 12, 2005 establishing the commission.

As required, each significant person must file with the TRC Economic Crimes Unit relevant documents/notarized disclosure(s) indicating their activities from the period January 1979 to October 2003.

Our investigation did not reveal your involvement in acts of economic crimes, as such, we hereby grant you the certificate for participating in the TRC Economic Inquiry Process.”

In July 2012, all three women were among a list of seventeen former Taylor associates removed from the UN travel bans and assets freeze ban.

Ironically, Tupee’s daughter, Camille Grace, Jewel’s son, Philip and daughter, Charlene, now running to become a representative were all born in the same here.

Tupee Enid, was previously listed on the travel bank listing as an “Ex-wife and associate of former Liberian President Charles Taylor with ongoing ties to him” and although she was questioned in relations to Mr. Taylor’s escape from prison, there has not been any complaint relating to atrocities.

Taylor: What’s in a Name

For Agnes, who’s next court date has been set for June 30, 2017, the charges appear to be linked to specific periods during the civil war.

It is alleged that between December 23, 1989, and January 1, 1991, she “intentionally inflicted severe pain or suffering on an individual in the performance or purported performance of her official duties” in the central Liberian city of Gbarnga.

Another count relates to the same period and the same allegation, but this time in Gborplay, on the border with Ivory Coast.

The fourth count claims that between the same period, Taylor “agreed with others” on a course of action that “would necessarily amount to or involve the commission of the offence of torture”.

Whichever way her war crimes ordeal ends, Dr. Agnes Taylor appears to have the odds stacked against her as war crimes prosecutors zero in on more evidence and seek witnesses who were around those areas at the time the alleged incidents occurred.

Philadelphia, USA – Federal authorities in Philadelphia announced the arrest Wednesday, April 13, 2016 of an East Lansdowne man they described as a Liberian war criminal who is responsible for the murder of noncombatants, sexual enslavement of women and conscription of child soldiers during that Liberia’s devastating civil war.

Jabbateh, 49, who allegedly went by the nom de guerre “General Jungle Jabbah,” was charged in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia for lying on his immigration forms while seeking asylum and legal residency in the United States nearly two decades ago.

He is at least the second player in the bloody civil conflict that roiled the African nation from 1989 to 2003 to be arrested in the Philadelphia area on similar immigration charges.

Jabbateh “allegedly committed unspeakable crimes in his home country, brutalizing numerous innocent victims,” said U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger in a statement Wednesday.

“This office will use whatever tools are available to bring to justice serious immigration criminals who abuse our immigration process by concealing their background and history.”

Memeger’s office described Jabbateh as a top commander in the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), one of many rebel groups that battled for control of the country in the late 1990’s.

Under his command, prosecutors said, fighters carried out brutal and genocidal attacks on other ethnic groups that led to the capture, conscription, torture and slaughter of civilian noncombatants.

The charges filed against him in federal court in Philadelphia stem from two questions that prosecutors say he failed to answer truthfully when applying for political asylum in 1998 and then for legal residency four years later.

The questions are the same for everyone seeking either asylum or permanent residency in the United States. Federal agents targeting war crimes suspects and other international criminals screen applicants to weed out potential suspects.

Philadelphia, Trenton and Minneapolis are known to host dozens of Liberian war criminals who managed to slide through the Liberian refugee population.

Jungle Jabbah becomes the second famous warlord to fall through the Federal immigration web since former NPFL Defense Minister Thomas Woewiyu was nabbed and thrown in Federal jail for what court records showed he lied on his U. S. Residency application.

Thomas Woewiyu is currently awaiting court trial in Philadelphia.

General Jungle Jabbah was first asked whether ever had engaged in genocide or been involved with a political organization that advocated it. The second sought to verify that he had answered all of the other questions truthfully.

Jabbateh admitted he had been a member of ULIMO but did not fully describe his activities with the group, prosecutors said.

He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court Wednesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney.

Jackson Kanneh, Special Reporter