(Monrovia) Liberia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday adopted a motion to establish a court to try civil war crimes, something victims have been calling for for more than two decades.
After years of virtual inaction, the adoption of this text is a first significant step towards the establishment of a court responsible for trying the perpetrators of human rights violations and “economic crimes” committed during the two brutal civil wars that caused around 250,000 deaths between 1989 and 2003.
Despite pressure from civil society and the international community, Liberia has yet to hold any trial during this period marked by a litany of abuses attributable to all parties: massacres of civilians, acts of cannibalism, torture, rape, mutilations, enlistment of child soldiers.
Convictions have been handed down by foreign courts. Former rebel commander Kunti Kamara has been on appeal since Tuesday in Paris after his sentence to life in prison at the end of 2022 for acts of barbarism and complicity in crimes against humanity during the first civil war.
Civil wars brought the country, one of the poorest on the planet, to its knees, ravaged ten years later by the Ebola epidemic.
More than two-thirds of MPs voted in favor of the motion, which will now be debated by the Senate before being sent to President Joseph Boakai.
“The resolution has been passed and justice is finally here for the Liberian people,” House Speaker Jonathan Fonati Koffa said after the vote.
Lawmakers were seen dancing and chanting “War crimes tribunal, we want justice,” an AFP correspondent reported.
When he was sworn in in January, President Boakai announced the creation of an office responsible for “exploring the feasibility” of such a court, the creation of which a special commission had recommended in 2009. This recommendation remained a letter. dead.
Some warlords and figures implicated in the report, such as Senator Prince Johnson, still hold prominent positions in politics and the economy. Vice President Jeremiah Koung is an ally of Prince Johnson.
“If you tamper with amnesty, you tamper with peace,” Prince Johnson warned Tuesday morning on a Monrovia radio station.
Mr Johnson argues that he is protected by a blanket amnesty granted to all parties to the conflict as part of a peace deal reached at the end of the war.