Liberia’s justice minister on Friday accused ex-president Charles Taylor of meddling in Liberian politics in violation of an agreement under which he lives in exile in Nigeria. ”We know that Mr Taylor is literally making telephone calls to his cronies in Liberia and other parts of the world daily,” Minister of Justice Kabinneh Janneh said.
Liberia’s interim president warned on Wednesday against ritual murder aimed at securing political posts through black magic, saying he would sign the death warrant of anyone convicted of the practice. ”Those who think they can easily take the life of another person and go free, are making a big mistake,” said Charles Gyude Bryant.
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/ 8 November 2004
A vast effort by the United Nations refugee agency and the Liberian government to return an estimated 500 000 internally displaced people to their home counties was poised to begin on Monday. The operation is seen as a key step in helping Liberia prepare for elections set for October next year.
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/ 29 October 2004
Mobs of angry youths brandishing machetes, sticks and Kalashnikov rifles rampaged through Liberia’s war-shattered capital on Friday in a rare outbreak of Muslim-Christian violence, prompting the country’s leader to order an immediate round-the-clock curfew. At least three churches and two mosques were set ablaze.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124621">Riots rock Monrovia</a>
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/ 29 October 2004
Gunshots were heard until early on Friday as angry youths carrying stones and sticks roamed the streets of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, two days before the scheduled end of a United Nations campaign to disarm fighters from the West African state’s civil war. A riot spread throughout the night across the city.
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/ 27 October 2004
Former combatant Marcus Weah says he was forced to smoke marijuana to make him brave in battle, and quit easily the day guns fell silent in Liberia, but he is rare. For the thousands of ex-fighters who will find quitting a drug habit more difficult, there is little available help.
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/ 20 October 2004
United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia used teargas to disperse a demonstration on Wednesday by parents and pupils who want their primary school in the capital reopened. Several parents said the protest embodied larger frustrations both with the Gyude Bryant government and the UN mission in the country.
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/ 23 September 2004
With handpumps, latrines and the unimaginable luxury of electricity, the inhabitants of Cestos City in eastern Liberia are slowly rebuilding their ruined town under the shadow of epidemic illness. ”The war has destroyed everything we had,” said Emmet Kay, looking around him at the barren landscape that used to be a large village.
West African officials called on Tuesday for a convention to elect a leader for Liberia’s main rebel group, aiming to quell rising dissent within their ranks that could destabilise the nascent peace in the war-torn state. A leadership crisis within the rebel group has hamstrung efforts to extend the Liberian central government into its territory.
Anthony Tamba is helping to rebuild his brother’s house on the outskirts of Tubmanburg, a provincial town 60km north of the Liberian capital, Monrovia. He and his family were tired of living in one of the many camps for internally displaced persons on the edge of Monrovia, so they decided to start moving home instead of waiting for the launch of the government’s community resettlement programme.
Fourteen years of war have brought about a near-terminal decline of public services in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. As a result, the streets are littered with household waste, shrapnel, carcasses, rubble and scrap that are an eyesore at best — at worst, a dangerous pollutant of underground water sources.
The man named earlier this week by the executive council of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy to replace Sekou damate Conneh as chairperson is dead. Charyee Doe died in a United States hospital on Wednesday following an operation to remove a tumour from his brain.
Former Liberian soldiers ran riot in Monrovia’s red-light district on Monday, leaving one dead, amid confusion about their timetable for disarming. Hundreds of fighters up-ended market stalls, broke windows and brandished their weapons in the melee, which ended with dozens of injuries. One person was killed.
A group with the rebel organisation Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) called for the removal of the country’s Finance Minister, Luseni Kamara, on Thursday. The Lurd splinter group — calling itself the executive committee — comprises the political leadership of the movement.
United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia disarmed more than 200 rebel fighters on Sunday in the territory of Tubmanburg in the north west of the country, according to the UN mission in Liberia (Unmil). Unmil’s regional commander called it the most successful operation so far in the disarmament programme.
The United Nations said this week nearly 1 800 former combatants reported for demobilisation during the first week of its relaunched disarmament programme in Liberia, but fewer than half of them handed in a gun. This revived fears that many of the weapons used in Liberia’s civil war have gone to neighbouring countries.
The United Nations tried for a second time on Thursday to disarm Liberia’s estimated 45 000 combatants, hoping that a five-month public awareness campaign — including a travelling song-and-dance revue — will pay off and help the West African state take a giant step towards lasting peace.
United Nations police and their Liberian counterparts used tear gas on Friday to break up a protest in Monrovia by thousands of students calling for salary arrears to be paid to their teachers, witnesses said. Stores, supermarkets and other businesses in Monrovia shut down as the students began throwing stones.
Prince Yormie Johnson, a former rebel leader, has returned to Liberia from nearly 12 years of exile in Nigeria to carve out a new career for himself in civilian politics. The former army officer has warned Liberia’s transitional government against setting up a war crimes tribunal.
Fighters from Liberia’s largest rebel group have run riot in the town of Tubmanburg, Liberia, to protest at a plan to remove Finance Minister Luseni Kamara from office, reports said on Wednesday. Leaders of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy decided at the weekend to replace Kamara.
One of Liberia’s most notorious warlords returned home after more than a decade in exile, asking forgiveness on Monday for ”whatever wrong” he may have done. Prince Johnson, a one-time faction leader turned evangelist and political hopeful, is best-known for the 1990 kidnapping, torture and killing of Liberia’s then-president, Samuel Doe.
Liberia’s Supreme Court has authorised a lower court to rule on a claim by exiled former president Charles Taylor that his properties were illegally searched. The decision was made on Tuesday after consultations between the Liberian courts concerned in a legal wrangle that also involves neighbouring Sierra Leone.
The journey back to normal life was never going to be an easy one for the ex-combatants of Liberia’s civil war. But, it could be argued that women fighters face a particularly tough challenge. Many women and girls found themselves caught up in the conflict — both as combatants and victims of sexual abuse by fighting groups.
Côte d’Ivoire refugees living in West African neighbour Liberia stormed their embassy on Monday to protest their treatment by diplomatic representatives, an AFP reporter saw. About 30 Ivorian men, women and children pulled down the orange, white and green Ivorian flag from outside the mission and took an embassy vehicle.
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/ 14 February 2004
Armed militias continue to violate human rights and international humanitarian law, despite the progress being made to end Liberia’s 14-year conflict, a human rights lawyer says. "The rebels are engaged in a new wave of violence, extorting, abducting and harassing the civilians," he said.
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/ 9 February 2004
When former Liberian president Charles Taylor took up Nigeria’s offer of exile last year, he left behind a country where the flow of information had slowed to a trickle — particularly in rural areas. Taylor had withdrawn the frequencies of private radio stations and had subsequently banned them.
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/ 15 December 2003
Wedged tightly together, about 2 000 young Liberian fighters wait in front of a crumbling building, their every move watched closely by a wary band of Bangladeshi and Jordanian peacekeepers.
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/ 10 December 2003
At least eight people have died in three days of riots in the Liberian capital sparked by former combatants angered by the conditions of a United Nations campaign to disarm them after 14 years of war. A civilian was shot eight times at point-blank range after refusing to hand over her vehicle to rioting fighters.
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/ 10 December 2003
Street battles left at least nine Liberians dead on Wednesday as United Nations forces tried to quell rampages by ex-government militias in Liberia’s capital. UN military commanders said at least one UN peacekeeper was wounded, but neither civilian nor military UN officials would confirm that UN troops had fired back at any point.
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/ 8 December 2003
Hundreds of Liberian fighters handed in their guns to United Nations peacekeepers at Schieffelin camp, 35km southeast of the capital, Monrovia, as the formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of an estimated 40 000 combatants got under way.
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/ 28 November 2003
War-weary Liberians reacted angrily on Friday after former fighters in the country’s back-to-back civil wars quit a disarmament meeting, and warned them not to hamper the return of peace after 14 years of bloodshed. The fighters accused interim leader Gyude Bryant of appointing government ministers without their input.
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/ 24 November 2003
Children danced in the streets of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Friday night and cars flashed their blinker lights in celebration after mains electricity was restored to part of the city for the first time in 10 years. The European Union has provided a diesel-powered generator at a cost of 000 and fuel to run it.