April 30, 2008
Tubmanburg (TRC)?A witness
told commissioners of Liberia's
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that the late Sierra Leonean rebel
leader Corporal Foday Sylvanus Sankoh was based in Tubmanburg, Bomi
County in 1990 before launching an
incursion in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Testifying Wednesday at the ongoing rural public hearing of the TRC in
Tubmanburg, Bomi County,
a resident of Tubmanburg, Mustapha Nyei, 60, said former president Charles
Taylor, then-leader of the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL),
visited Sankoh at his base in Tubmanburg in 1990.
Nyei said before fighters of Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
attacked the Bo Waterside frontier to launch their incursion in Sierra
Leone, Sierra Leonean and Liberian fighters
were transported from Robertsport City,
Grand Cape
Mount County
to Tubmanburg to be briefed by Corporal Sankoh.
Following the briefing, Nyei explained the fighters boarded three pickup
trucks for the Sierra Leonean border at Bo Waterside where they launched an
invasion.
"Foday Sankoh was based here in Tubmanburg. That was no secret around here.
When Taylor came here, he stayed
here with Sankoh for nine days, and everyone saw them here," the witness
explained.
He said RUF fighters based in Robersport and Tubmanburg Cities were
under the command of General Oliver Varney and other commanders he only named
as: "One Man One," "CO Korto," and Dixon Wollo.
Mr. Nyei said at regular intervals Sankoh left his Tubmanburg base to visit
his RUF fighters in areas occupied by the group in Sierra
Leone.
Mr. Taylor is standing trial in The Hague
for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in neighboring Sierra
Leone where Sankoh was a rebel leader.
Corporal Sankoh himself died in prison while standing trial for war crimes
at the United Nations-backed War Crimes Court
in Freetown.
The TRC is an independent body set up to investigate the root causes of the
Liberian crisis, document human rights violations, review the history of
Liberia, and put all human rights abuses that occurred during the period from
1979 to 2003 on record. The TRC mandate is to also identify victims and
perpetrators and make recommendations on amnesty, prosecution and reparation.
The ongoing rural public hearing in Bomi
County is being held under the
theme: "Confronting Our Difficult Past, For A Better Future."
