Liberian massacre confirmed
2004-02-24 14:12
Monrovia - The head of a newly created human rights commission here charged Monday that militias backing exiled Liberian former president Charles Taylor massacred 369 civilians in the southeast of the country in April 2003.
Dempster Brown told AFP that the killings in Youbor, River Gbeh and Tuobo Gbaweleken were carried out on the orders of former commanders in conflicts in neighboring Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone as well as in Liberia's civil war.
He said the bulk of the victims were killed in Tuobo Gbaweleken, while 100 were killed in River Gbeh and 53 in Youbor, according to survivors.
"There are no mass graves, but the bones are stockpiled at the sites where the people were executed," said Brown, the head of the Independent Human Rights Commission.
He accused former militia commanders close to Taylor, who stepped down in August 2003 under intense international pressure, of ordering the massacres while forces loyal to the then president were fighting two rebel groups.
He named Liberian generals Benjamin Yeaten and William Sumo as well as Andrew Guei, the son of the late Ivorian military strongman Robert Guei, and two late Sierra Leoneans, former warlord Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie and one-time junta leader Johnny Paul Koroma.