Liberia: Where is President Doe's Body?
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The Analyst (Monrovia)
ANALYSIS
28 August 2008
Posted to the web 29 August 2008
Liberians, at least those who claimed to have represented them as stakeholders in Accra in 2003 agreed that if victims and perpetrators of war excesses sit down at a forum under the umbrella of TRC peace and reconciliation will take roots in Liberia.
That process of truth telling, forgiveness seeking, and forgiveness granting is ongoing at the Centennial Pavilion in Monrovia with mostly key political and military players taking the stand.
Former chief justice Chea Cheapoo, Presidential Security Advisor H. Boima Fahnbulleh, former presidential contender and UL professor Alhaji G.V. Kromah, former foreign minister Lewis Brown, former PAL executive Oscar Jaryee Quiah, and PPP Secretary Jesus Alieu Swaray, all took the stand to testify to their roles in Liberia's woes.
Now it's the big one: the head of the defunct Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), now senior senator of Nimba County, Prince Y. Johnson.
He took the stand yesterday with key revelations under his sleeves. With reporter Edwood Dennis, The Analyst Staff Writer reports:
President Samuel K. Doe was killed on September 11, 1990 by forces loyal to former Field Marshal Prince Y. Johnson. But do you know how and where his remains were disposed of?
Well, the former Field Marshall General the rebel INPFL now Nimba County Senator, Prince Y. Johnson, took the stage yesterday to unlock secrets of the Liberian war excesses yet unknown.
This includes allegation that former Interim President, Amos Sawyer, has siphoned the nation's resources to build his personal fortune.
The testament of Doe's death and disposal
The leader of the defunct rebel movement, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), Prince Johnson says the body of slain president Samuel Kanyon Doe was burnt to ashes and thrown in the river.
He said he has never explained this to Doe's widow and son with whom he reportedly reconciled in 2004 under the auspices of a Nigerian evangelist and preacher.
According to him, he initially had Doe's body embalmed one Dr. Amochie, who managed the Island Clinic where Doe's body was put on display before being buried along with his chief of staff who died in battle.
The embalmment was to last for 25 years, but the former Field Marshall said the situation changed when politicians began to blame him for not giving the slain president a proper and decent burial with landmark epithet.
He said under pressure, he ordered his former deputy to take journalists to the burial site, exhume, and show the body to the journalists in order to erase all doubts that Doe was buried after all.
That he said was done as ordered, but that he was later advised by the deputy, Samuel Varnii (deceased), not to rebury the body because it was not proper to do so.
While that question hangs, observers say the revelation by Mr. Johnson that Doe's body was burnt and the ashes strewn over a river probably laid to rest rumours that Doe remains were eaten in an INPFL ritual to make the rebel group invincible.
He said it was based on the advice that he cremated the body and dumped the ashes in the river, falling short of saying where the cremation idea came from since it was not part of Liberia's burial culture.
On September 9, 1990, forces loyal to the former warlord captured Doe at the Free Port of Monrovia where he had gone to meet with authorities of ECOMOG to discuss issues relating to the war and how it would end.
But that visit was short-lived when Doe was left vulnerable at the mercy of the marauding rebels who captured him, took him to the Caldwell base of the INPFL, severed his toes and ears, and left him to bleed to death.
The training and early warnings of fragmentation
In another war excess revelation - this time on conspiracy and double-crossing, Gen. Johnson said Charles Taylor was not the original leader of the NPFL, but that he was brought on board by Tonia King, a son-in-law of slain President William R. Tolbert who wanted to revenge the assassination of his father-in-law.
He claimed that King told them that the only way the NPFL would have his fullest cooperation was when an Americo-Liberian, as Charles Taylor is, heads the movement.
Relevant Links
Johnson told the TRC and Liberians that the movement was initially headed by the late J. Nicholas Podier, one of the original members of the PRC government, who was killed by Doe on allegation of plotting to overthrow him.
Read comments. Write your own.
Please cut the moralizing crap: what is your point? State it clearly and crisply, and please watch your grammar, for most people find it extremely difficult, so I hear, to excavate your meaning from your grammatically challenged sentences.
Spare us the sunday morning sermon, please: cut the morose moralizing crap. What is your point? State it clearly and crisply. Warning: I shall expose any and all syntactical, semantical and idiomatic mistakes you make, for your own good.
You keep accusing me of grammatical deficiency and yet, I see in your posting a repeated use of many of the words and phrases that I have used in the past. For example, you have substituted my proverbial "sledge hammer" to your proverbial "rocket" and you continuous use of the word “ubiquitous” and now “semantic” is definitely becoming nauseating. Thanks though, for attempting to set me straight.
I accuse you of grammatical deficiency, you say? You kid me: review the antecedent post, and therein you'll find at least two elementary grammatical errors. Now, do your homework: find them, and repost the same text sans the grammatical worms.
Hint: one does not "sustitute to, but "substitute for". Worse, oh me fren, "you continuous..." is not English, if you feel me.
Your philosophical naivete is boundless: no one can set you "straight," whatever that may mean in your convuluted lexicon. Nay, YOU HAVE TO "SET YOURSELF STRAIGHT."
U understand me… [Read Full Text]
Review your post, and negate the two grammatical worms therein. If you fail to do so, I'll do it for you.
I ain't kidding, if you feel me. Find the grammatical blunders or else!
You must not have anything better to say if, instead of discussing the issues, you have resulted into correcting my English. Why don't you start with yourself? But that's not the point, so long as you continue to respond to my postings, I have serve the COMMUNICATION purpose.
This post was deleted because it contravenes AllAfrica's commenting guidelines.
This post was deleted because it contravenes AllAfrica's commenting guidelines.
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The truth is in the details and the only way to get to it is to ask the right people the right questions. I believe that the statement takers at the TRC are too focused on generality. They need to start peeling back layers to get to the truth. I know that technically Prince Johnson was a foot soldier, but he was privy to the information about the internal mechanism of NPFL war machine and it's a shame that he got away without providing us with information that we didn't already know. Anyone who has watched the tape… [Read Full Text]