MONROVIA, LIBERIA — One of Liberia’s most infamous warlords admitted Tuesday that he had trained in Libya and helped topple the government of Burkina Faso before overthrowing Liberia’s president.
Prince Johnson, a warlord who has reinvented himself and is now a senator in Liberia’s U.S.-modeled Congress, had initially refused to appear before the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
His testimony Tuesday before the packed hall was another turning point in Liberia’s struggle to make the actors of its brutal 14-year conflict face up to the horrors they inflicted.
Although he is now a senator, Johnson is viewed by many as a warlord-in-a-suit. He is best known for the gruesome torture of Liberia’s President Samuel K. Doe, who died in 1990 in Johnson’s custody.
Johnson led the assault, taking Doe hostage and then videotaped himself drinking Budweiser beer as he ordered his men to cut off the former president’s ears. The videotape was copied and sold on street corners. Johnson’s men celebrated by parading Doe’s body in a wheelbarrow.
But since Liberia emerged from war in 2003 and he, along with other warlords, reinvented himself as a senator, Johnson has tried to distance himself from the president’s death. On Tuesday he told the truth commission that although it was his forces that captured Doe, others are responsible for his death.
He argued that long before he led the Sept. 9, 1990 overthrow, an interim government had been formed in exile. Its goal was to overthrow Doe, who had become deeply unpopular by favoring members of his ethnic group and allowing government forces to brutally kill his rivals.
“They sat in exile and formed an interim government to replace the Doe government when Doe was still on the throne,” Johnson said. “I was only the instrument that they used.” “We all were involved in this Samuel Doe matter,” he added.
“We all wanted a change.” To overthrow Doe, Johnson said he and the other Liberians-in-exile reached out to Blaise Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso’s army and the trusted friend of Burkina Faso’s President Thomas Sankara. Compaore helped Johnson and warlord Charles Taylor go to Libya for guerrilla training.
In his testimony, he does not say how or why he helped overthrow Sankara. But in his 2003 autobiography, Johnson explains that when Sankara learned of the planned coup, he refused to let his country be used to destabilize Liberia. So Taylor conspired with Compaore to assassinate the president, Johnson wrote.
The 1987 death of Sankara, who was widely considered one of Africa’s hopes, was a blow for the region.
Earlier this year, Johnson adamantly refused to appear before the commission, saying he had already apologized to Doe’s family.
Although the country held transparent elections in 2005, Liberia is struggling to knit itself back together. With the exception of Charles Taylor who is on trial at The Hague for alleged war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, none of the actors in Liberia’s conflict face charges.
In an effort to heal the wounds of the past, Liberia’s new government created the truth commission, where victims and perpetrators are invited to lay the past bare.
