Press Releases

Monrovia, February 4, 2009 (TRC): The leader of the defunct Liberia Peace Council George E. S. Boley and former Internal Affairs Minister Horatio Dan Morais will Thursday testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC).

Mr. Boley, a former minister of education and state for presidential affairs will testify about his role and experience during the country's conflict past. He also served on a collective presidency onetime comprising heads of the major warring factions styled the Liberia National Transitional Government (LNTG).

Boley's appearance will complete testimonies of heads of the former warring factions except defunct NPFL leader Charles Taylor who is presently facing war crimes trial in The Hague before the United Nations backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Mr. Morais was onetime superintendent of Maryland County during the regime of former President Charles Taylor.

Their appearance is part of the commission's ongoing "Contemporary History of the Conflict (1979-2003)" Public Hearings at the historic Centennial Memorial Pavilion in Monrovia.

Under the theme: "Understanding the Conflict Through its Principal Events and Actors," the ongoing hearings are addressing 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.
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Signed: _________________________
Mambu James Kpargoi, Jr.
Media & Information Officer