January 17, 2008
MONROVIA (TRC)?The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Public Hearings
continued Thursday with seven witnesses testifying amidst growing youth
interest.
At the Centennial Memorial Pavilion, dozens of secondary and university
school students thronged to listen to accounts of horrible atrocities,
committed by various factions in Liberia's
decade and half civil war.
Mr. James Kabah, an elderly man who survived the July 20, 2002 Mahel River
Bridge massacre on the Tubmanburg highway, revealed that government troops
under the command of General Roland Duo carried out the killings of over 350
civilians, including babies.
Kabah, 73, said Tubmanburg was under the control of the Liberians United for
Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), but following its capture by government
troops, the LURD went to various communities, asking everybody to assemble in
front of a house where their names were recorded by General Karnga.
Kabah recalled that after the exercise, they were given farina and sugar
before being taken away. He added that 10 persons per trip boarded a white
pick-up under the guise of heading to Monrovia.
He was among the occupants for the fourth trip to the Mahel
River Bridge.
Kabbah disclosed that when they arrived there, they discovered dead bodies
lying around the bridge that were ordered dumped into the river by General
Roland Duo.
Another witness, Philip Zoedua, said that the massacre of 570 people in
Sinje, Grand Cape
Mount County
was carried out by the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia
(ULIMO) faction of Alhaji Kromah, which accused victims of being National
Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) sympathizers.
Zoedua, 32, said he and others were in Kanka about eight miles from Sinje
when the incursion stated, but they later moved to the ECOMOG base in
Tubmanburg. However, gripped by fear when the peacekeepers decided to
pull out, he said they returned to Sinje.
Zoedua, whose uncle, Varney Zudua, his wife and other relatives were among
those who were executed, said the summary killings were carried out by Generals
Sando Jackson, alias "Battle Front Jackson," Zizah Mazah and Wright of
the ULIMO-K faction. Zoedua said that during the killings, Sinje was densely
populated with refugees who came from surrounding villages and towns.
Mannah Massaley, whose father was among the first group of people executed
at the Mahel River
Bridge under the command of General
Roland Duo, corroborated James Kabah's testimony.
Massaley said on July 19, 2002
after government troops captured Tubmanburg from the Liberians United for
Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebels who had apparently run out of
ammunitions, they asked everybody to assemble in front of a house on top of the
hill.
He said they were locked up in a house and told to keep quiet on grounds
that they were moving them to Monrovia
for safety not knowing their intention to execute them for being alleged LURD
sympathizers.
Massaley, whose mother was allegedly among those executed in a village near
Tubmanburg under the command of General Duo, said his younger brother Joseph
Massaley was present but was later taken away by Duo to live with him. He said that
in 2005 their uncle came across Joseph in Monrovia
and took him back to Tubmanburg.
The witness claimed he was almost executed under the Mahel
River Bridge
by General Duo's troops but was saved by General Vanmuyah Sheriff, who was en route
to Tubmanburg to deploy troops.
The fourth witness, name withheld, accused soldiers of the Armed Forces of
Liberia (AFL) of carrying out mass killings in Nimba
County in 1985, after an abortive
coup plot by the late General Thomas Quiwonkpa. The witness said the killings
took place when the soldiers, most of them of the Krahn ethnic group under the
command of General Charles Julu, then chief of the LAMCO Plant Protection
Force, were in search of the late General Quinwonkpa.
The witness said he saw soldiers on board AFL army trucks set houses on fire
in Zorgbowee, the hometown of the late Gen. Quiwonkpah. The witness said there
are two mass graves presently in the heart of Zorgbowee
Town where victims of the massacre
are buried.
Although he did not witness killings in the aftermath of the 1983 Nimba
raid, the witness claimed that people, including his brother, were tortured and
beaten by the soldiers.
He added that in 1990, when the NPFL attacked Nimba, claiming it had come to
redeem the people, several persons, mainly youth, were encouraged by the elders
to join the rebels ranks.
Another witness, Gbassey Kamara said that in 1991 his town was attacked by
group of men, who referred to themselves as "Freedom Fighters," demanded two
residents of the Mandingo tribe and executed them.
Kamara, 34, said that following the killings, the group went to Gold Camp, a
town dominated by ethnic Krahns, and massacred the residents. He said the NPFL
men who carried out the killings were under the command of a General named
"Kpelle Boy."
Kamara further explained that in 1994, when the ULIMO rebel faction split
into two, the defunct ULIMO-K faction headed by Alhaji Kromah took
control and committed numerous atrocities, accusing the residents of being NPFL
sympathizers.
The sixth witness, Saa Jimmy, said that when ULIMO-K captured Foya, Lofa
County, they carried out looting
and summary executions. The people, he said were used as slave laborers to
carry heavy loads, including vehicle engines, on their heads to the
Liberian/Guinean border at Solomba.
Jimmy, who claimed he is now impotent from torture, said his father was
killed in his presence when he complained of being extremely weary while
carrying heavy bundles of the rebel's loots to the border. Jimmy said his
grandfather, grandmother, step-father and other relatives were in a house when
it was set ablaze by the rebels, thus burning the family alive.
Thursday's last witness, Collins Chelley, a former employee of the National
Bureau of Investigation said that in July 2002 he was accused by NBI Director
Ramsey Moore of secretly taking detained journalist Hassan Bility to the
American Embassy in Mamba Point for photographs. A charged he denied.
He said that as a result of the allegation, he was arrested and detained at
an underground cell at the Executive Mansion
where he was tortured by investigators Robert Beer and Peter Teah for 75 days. Chelley
said he was later transferred to the MP headquarters at the Barclay Training
Center (BTC). He claimed he worked eight years for the NBI assigned in the
Internal Security Division (ISD).