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Liberia truth commission recommends 30-year ban on president holding office

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf should be subject to public sanctions, including a 30-year ban on holding public office, for her role in supporting the country's 1997-2003 civil wars, according to the final report released Monday by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC). Sirleaf testified before the TRC that she provided financial support to the National Patriotic Front of former president Charles Taylor when it was preparing to oust then-president Samuel Doe. The report names 50 people, including Sirleaf, whom the TRC says were "political leaders and financiers of different warring factions," though the list is "by no means exhaustive." Consistent with an earlier version of the report released Friday, the TRC recommended war crimes charges against nine people, including Taylor and Prince Y. Johnson, a senator elected in 2005, as well as a list of perpetrators who have shown remorse and should not be punished. Johnson's name had been removed from Friday's version of the report. The TRC held its first public session in January 2008, after beginning its work in October 2006 and stalling due to lack of funding in June 2007. Taylor is currently on trial in the The Hague before the Special Court for Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity. In January, Taylor's son, Charles Arthur Emmanuel, was sentenced to a 97-year jail term by a US federal district court for committing torture in Liberia.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on July 06, 2009 (boomark / email).