Liberia: Doe, Prince Johnson Signed Truce to Attack Ecomog
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The Analyst (Monrovia)
28 August 2008
Posted to the web 29 August 2008
Beleaguered President Samuel Kanyon Doe and Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) leader Prince Johnson signed a truce to attack West African peacekeepers, Prince Johnson, the leader of the defunct warring faction said.
Mr. Johnson said during a visit to the Barclay Training Center (BTC) military barrack in 1990 he met President Doe and signed a truce.
The former rebel leader, now senior senator of Nimba County said at the BTC he received "enough of arms and ammunition from Doe" for the operation and reciprocated the gesture by donating 500 bags of rice to the president.
He said during the visit Doe told him that the Economic Community Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) peacekeeping force was an American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation that did not want development in Liberia.
Senator Johnson said Doe assured him that he did not stayed in Liberia to fight him but to resist the reinstatement of Americo-Liberian rule in the country.
Johnson was testifying Tuesday in continuation of the ongoing Institutional and Thematic Inquiry Hearings of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia where a mammoth crowd turned out to witness the proceedings.
But Johnson said during another attempt to return to the BTC to consummate discussions with President Doe, he was cautioned by presidential spokesman Selee Thompson that there was a plot to assassinate him.
"Selee Thompson told me to not go to the barracks because Doe troops had opened a corridor from the SDA School and as soon as I got into that corridor I would have been killed. He informed me about the plot to kill me. The first law of nature is self preservation," Johnson said.
He said during interrogation following his capture on September 9, 1990, President Doe said his visit to Bushrod Island was because West African peacekeepers came into the country and refused to visit him at the Executive Mansion.
"An unexpected Samuel Doe decided to visit the Freeport of Monrovia in my control territory because the peacekeepers came to Liberia and failed to visit him.
Doe said the visit was intended to ask ECOMOG why they came into the country and did not paid a courtesy call on him.
He thought that he was the town chief and when a stranger comes to the town they must meet the chief first," he said.
He said Mr. Doe said he was surprised when he arrived at the Freeport to know that Mr. Thompson was arranging his travel with ECOMOG peacekeepers instead of making an appointment for his visit.
Under the theme: "Understanding the Conflict Through its Principal Events and Actors," the ongoing hearings will address the root causes of the conflict, including its military and political dimensions.
The hearings are focused on events between 1979 and 2003 and the national and external actors that helped to shape those events.
Relevant Links
The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005. The TRC was established to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation," and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.
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