As the world watch Liberia accommodating pronounced war criminals in high positions of trust, including the legislature, members of the United States Congress are still opting for the establishment of ‘Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal’ in Liberia, urging President George Manneh Weah who once served as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to see reason for the establishment of such tribunal.
Two years ago, US House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously passed a resolution yesterday supporting full implementation of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission‘s (TRC) recommendation for the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal for Liberia.
The resolution comes on the heels of President George Weah’s first visit to the United States since taking office in January 2018. In advance of President Weah’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, 80 regional, national and international civil societies groups issued an open letter calling upon him to implement the TRC recommendations.
” This resolution is very exciting because it shows the willingness of the United States government to use it’s political ties to Liberia to support victims in their call for justice and accountability for civil war atrocities,” said a senior staff of the Center for Justice & Accountability, an international human rights legal organization.
Similar call was made On July 26, 2018, by the United Nations Human Rights Committee called on the Liberian government should establish a process to bring about accountability for past war crimes. The committee expressed “concern that none of the alleged perpetrators of gross human rights violations and war crimes mentioned in the TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] report has been brought to justice.”
Since that time of the US Congress stance to call on the George Weah-led government, sources closed to the GNN has revealed that the United States is still concern about the immediate of the tribunal, noting that those who took part in country fifteen years long brutal civil war are brought to book in order to bear the full weight of the humanitarian law.
According to sources also closed to the ECOWAS Parliament, one of Liberia’s representations at this august organization has recently turned down his seat due to pressure about his link to the civil war that took the lives of over 250,000 lives and the destruction of the country infrastructural which is yet to be reshaped.