A Need for War Crime Tribunal for Liberia

I feel compelled to join the debate about the importance of creating A War Crime Tribunal for Liberia. But I must quickly advise that the court should be based in a more sophisticated country with the requisite facilities. I am convinced that the creation of a war crime Tribunal for Liberia will minimize the culture of impunity. People must give justification of their actions, in other words, people must give accounts of their actions. Thank God that crime is not transferable.

Recently, the President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote the Liberia Legislature about government determination to ensure the scrupulous enforcement of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) report. This latest decision on the part of the president has sparked debate in many intellectual quarters in street comers in the capitol and its environs. The TRC report though is divided into several major and strategic components. One of the components is denial of public office for 30 years, another is Economic crime and the other is International Crime and Crime against Humanity.

As I walked in the streets of Monrovia and in other communities in Montserrado, I could see the euphoria and enthusiasm in the behavior and utterances of the people, yielding for the creation of a War Crime Tribunal for Liberia in order to defeat the culture of impunity. Cecilia Dolo, a single mother did not hide her emotion by saying that Liberians should not relent, calling for this court because it is unfair for alleged criminals to enjoy while those who they have inflicted wounds upon are suffering.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC) was established at the end of the peace conference in Accra, Ghana when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed by all parties to the conflict including the international community as guarantors, in August 2003. This was for Liberia, its first period of calm and relative peace following 14 years of civil war and violent armed conflict.

Under the CPA sitting President Charles Taylor stepped down and departed Liberia into exile paving way for a two year Liberia National Transitional Government (LNTG) headed by Chairman Gyude Bryant. In June 2005, the National Transitional Legislative Assembly enacted the TRC Act into law.

National Elections were held in November 2005 and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected, sealing a long period of conflict and creating the space for national reckoning. The elected President inaugurated the nine-member Commission in February 2006 and the Commission was launched to commence its operations on June 22, 2006.

Since its launching in June 2006, the Commission, for the last three years, worked tirelessly to fulfill its mandate in the face of mounting administrative, operational, financial and human resource challenges. This occasioned a slow start of the Commission’s work in the first year till July 2007 when activities of the Commission resumed uninterrupted to present. Pursuant to its mandate, the Commission conducted public awareness campaigns, collected thousands of witness testimonies and held public hearings in all 15 counties of Liberia as well as in the Diaspora.

Now that the commission has completed its work and further forwarded recommendations to the government of Liberia with complimentary copies distributed among international organizations as well as sovereign governments especially those who have supported its work. Today, the TRC report is been treated with distain as a result of political patronage and self seeking interest.

Like any other government, this government is under the moral and statutory obligation to ensure that there is a war crime tribunal for Liberia, brining to justice those vampires who have killed, raped, and looted our resources and further abused the right of innocent citizens. Is there a risk?

”Yes”, there is a serious risk of arrest for several indicted personages whose names are mentioned in the TRC report. They may be picked up any time in a foreign air port or any port entry of a foreign country. Absolutely, non of those TRC indicted persons should have the courage to venture out of Liberia’s territorial border points while this debate is ongoing.

The fact of the matter is, non of the TRC indictees are covered or should be covered by sovereign immunity. These rules of sovereign immunity as provided by international law are intended to govern the extent to which a state may claim to be free from the jurisdiction of a foreign nation’s courts. Historically, international law recognized a principle of absolute immunity for sovereign states, under which no state be put on trial without its consent. This rule reflected the fundamental premise that all states are independent and equal under international law, and the notion that subjecting a state to a foreign court’s jurisdiction would be inconsistent with the idea of sovereign equality.

But there is a condition, and this condition is that, as countries become more and more involved in commercial activities, international law shifted toward the concept of restrictive sovereign immunity under which a state retains immunity from lawsuits based on its official public acts, but may be subjected to a foreign state’s jurisdiction regarding claims arising out of its private acts either against its own citizens or foreign nationals.

In this case, Liberia’s TRC convicts are not immune to apprehension when the need arises because the acts the state committed against its own citizens during its prolong civil war has contravened the fundamental principles. As a matter of fact, those who the TRC indicted did not kill, steal, rape etc because the portfolio they occupied at the time. They allegedly committed these heinous crimes in their private capacity, and as such, they should be prosecuted in such manner.