Liberia gets atrocities report
2007-10-31 22:39
Monrovia - A 4 000-page long US-prepared report on atrocities committed during Liberia's decades of unrest was on Wednesday handed over to the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The previously classified report was forwarded to the commission through the country's Catholic Justice and Peace Commission.
Report not likely to be published
"The document catalogues all happenings of the war from the 1980 coup plot", said Richmond Anderson, the TRC spokesperson.
Richmond however said that the contents of the report were not likely to be published at least within the next two decades, to avoid it prejudicing the TRC's ongoing investigations.
"The TRC's work is to get information on what happened during the years of war. If this document is released, people who might have been classified as perpetrators of the war may not come forward when there is a hearing," he added.
The report will serve as a working aid for the TRC.
"We are doing our own investigations. We will compare our findings with that of the document to have a better judgement," he said.
Dozens of TRC workers last week deployed anew across the war-battered west African country to document evidence from victims of atrocities in civil crises spanning 24 years until peace in 2003.
Conflict intensified with rebellion
Modelled on South Africa's TRC, the commission is probing rights violations including murders, extra-judicial killings, economic crimes and sexual abuse committed by all parties to the country's conflicts.
Unrest in Liberia was sparked by food riots in 1979 followed by a coup in 1980 that toppled former president William Tolbert.
A decade later, the conflict intensified with a rebellion led by warlord Charles Taylor and the subsequent ouster and assassination of then president Samuel Doe during the first of two civil wars.
Taylor, later elected president and now on trial for war crimes, stepped down in 2003 in the face of an insurgency and international pressure to quit.