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Arrest
Taylor immediately, and clamp down on terrorist
activities
Wednesday,
March 29, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
The
plane that took President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf back
to Liberia after her successful visit to the United
States was still in the air when the
"Prince" made his eerie comments about
destabilization and a possible coup d' tat in Liberia.
The “Prince” is the other Johnson; no
relation to the president is the former leader of the
defunct Independent National Patriotic Front of
Liberia, an offshoot of Charles Taylor’s National
Patriotic Front of Liberia he broke away from to lead
his own rebellion during the heyday of the civil war.
Charles M.
Taylor
Prince Y. Johnson
Prince Johnson even went on to say that
(anti-peace) elements in the country threatened to
kill him and his family if he did not join them in
preventing the extradition of Charles Taylor to Sierra
Leone to answer to the 17-count indictment and charges
of crimes against humanity against him.
“I received series of threats from Roland Duo
who claimed to be frontline General that I should join
them, else my life will be in danger. They will attack
me in my house; they will do this and that. I told him
to tell his men that this is the last chance Liberia
has because 14 years of bloody conflict profit us
nothing but massive destruction of lives and
properties,” Senator Johnson, who is also Chairman
of the Senate Standing Committee on national security,
reportedly said.
This is happening at a time when pressure is
mounting on the Sirleaf administration to work
something out with President Olusegun Obasanjo of
Nigeria to hurriedly turn Charles Taylor over to an
elected Liberian government to face the war crimes
charges against him.
And also at a time it is reported that Mr.
Obasanjo has finally agreed to turn the former warlord
over, and “has today March 25 informed President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that the government of Liberia
is free to take former President Charles Taylor into
its custody,” the statement from the president’s
office said.
The Nigerian leader ought to be commended for
his latest act. However, he got some of us in a very
tough position because on the one hand one wants to go
after him hard for appearing to be a Taylor
sympathizer, and for ignoring the pleas of the victims
by rejecting all attempts to turn the killer over to
his accusers; and at the same time one does not want
to be too hard on him to appear ungrateful for what he
has done personally, and what his nation has
sacrificed for our nation and people throughout our
crisis.
But days after President Obasanjo gave the
Liberian government the green light to enter his
country and arrest Taylor, we are told from news
reports that the fugitive former leader supposedly
played Houdini on his security guards by escaping from
his villa and went into hiding.
It is hard to believe that Charles Taylor
actually escaped from the Nigerian authorities, a day
or two after it was announced that they would no
longer protect him from being arrested. And why
didn’t the host country rush to provide the
necessary security needed to prevent Mr. Taylor, who
is now a fugitive from “escaping” after the
announcement was made?
It is unfortunate that the Liberian people have
to go through this all over again. And now they have
to endure intimidation and vile threats from the
Taylor loyalists and the erratic Prince Yeduo Johnson,
whose wild revelations about destabilization is on the
level of a volcanic eruption, which is a threat to the
survival of our nation.
But why would Roland Duo, the alleged
mastermind and Taylor operative who’s supposed to be
behind this destabilization campaign contact Prince
Johnson, a guy known historically not to have any love
for Charles Taylor to join him in bringing down an
elected government?
Because of his past rebel activities it is
difficult to tell whether the former warlord is lying
about his association with Roland Duo. It is also hard
to believe whether Mr. Johnson is telling us
everything he knows about the clandestine activities
around him.
So why didn’t Prince Johnson, the
“born-again Christian/ Evangelist” and lawmaker
first contact law enforcement authorities to
investigate and keep a watchful eye on the movement of
the individuals before going public with his
information?
If Mr. Johnson is dead serious about peace, his
integrity and the stability of Liberia, he should come
clean and do the right thing by telling everything he
knows about this issue to law enforcement. I will even
go further by suggesting that Mr. Johnson call for an
independent investigation into this matter if he’s
not hiding anything.
But first, Prince Johnson must step aside
temporarily from his official duties as Chairman of
the Standing Committee on National Security and allow
a neutral body to conduct a thorough investigation to
get to the bottom of this issue.
That’s because blind followers of the former
president who are craving violence and are roaming freely in the country will incite violence once
things don’t go their way, and will never digest
such news that their god, Taylor, is not protected
anymore by the government of Nigeria but will be
arrested for his dastardly crimes against humanity.
No matter what people like Johnson and Duo want
us to believe, and how they want us to behave, Charles
Taylor is a criminal who must be arrested, put on
trial and put in a real jail if he’s ever found
guilty, because an indicted and convicted criminal
shouldn’t live in a luxury villa in another country
but imprisoned to pay for his crimes.
Liberia is still a fragile nation incapable of
handling a high-profile individual such as Charles
Taylor in any prison in the country. If he’s ever
arrested, it will be a good idea for him to be
transferred to a much safer neutral location or Sierra
Leone where the international tribunal is awaiting his
arrival.
Just like they did when they stood with the
Liberian people during its civil crisis, the
international community must once again stand
steadfastly with the Liberian people in these critical
times, when threats of destabilization looms because
of the news that Mr. Taylor will be arrested and turn
over to either the Sirleaf administration or the war
crimes court in Sierra Leone.
There is a lot at stake, and a lot to lose. The
Liberian people can no longer take this nonsense from
these individuals anymore.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf must do all she
can to protect the Liberian people, and should never
be intimidated by Prince Johnson’s comments or any
threat of destabilization.
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