A participant of the November 12, 1985 abortive invasion, Joe Wyllie told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) how the Government of Sierra Leone supported the insurgents to cross into Liberia.
Mr. Wyllie said then Sierra Leonean President Siaka Stevens was reportedly angry with Head of State Samuel K. Doe because Doe had a love affair with one of his young wives.
As a means to apparently get even with Doe, Wyllie said, President Stevens supported insurgents led by former commanding general Thomas Quiwonkpah to cross the Sierra Leonean frontier to topple the regime.
He was testifying Friday at the ongoing TRC Thematic and Institutional Inquiry Hearings at the Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia.
"I think they developed some differences because of some social problems. President Siaka Stevens had a young girl by the name of Bendu or Bintu who came to visit Monrovia and I heard Doe had an affair with her", Wyllie who was deputy defense minister for operation in the Gyude Bryant National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) power sharing government said.
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.
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.
