Two people that played prominent roles in the Liberian civil war of the 1990s – Mohammed Jabbateh and Charles Taylor -lost their different court cases this week.
Jabbateh, a warlord known by the moniker “Jungle Jabbah”, lost his appeal against the 30-year prison sentence he is serving in the US for lying about his role in Liberia’s civil war.
Jungle Jabbah was found guilty of immigration fraud for falsely telling US authorities in the 1990s that he had never belonged to an armed group.
One witness told the court in 2018 how Jabbateh had ordered the heart of a captive to be cooked for his fighters.
The court’s decision to uphold the sentence “should serve as an encouragement to all Liberians to stand up for justice and fight impunity,” said Hassan Bility of the Global Justice and Research Project.
Meanwhile, a request by former Liberian President Charles Taylor to be moved from a British prison to a “safe third country” has been rejected by Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Taylor had pleaded with the court that the coronavirus pandemic in the UK was a big threat to his life and wanted to be moved to a “safe third country”, the agency reports.
The Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone said he had not specified which countries he considered safe.
The court added that the World Health Organization had not declared any country safe from Covid-19.
Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison by a UN-backed war crimes court at The Hague.
He was found guilty of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.