A local Child Rights Advocacy Organization, Forerunners Children’s Universal Rights for Survival (FOCUS) has welcomed the 30 years imprisonment of one of the defunct ULIMO K notorious Rebel General, Mohammed Jabateh, alias “Jungle Jabbah”.
FOCUS says the 30 years imprisonment of Jungle Jabbah by a court in the Unted States represents a new dawn in Liberia where warlords are being apprehended one by one to account for their war-time stewardship.
Anthony Boakia, Sr., Executive Director of FOCUS said the sentence is also a victory for war victims, especially former child combatants who were drugged, armed.
Boakai said in a press release that the child combatants were reduced to monsters of cruelty by Rebel Generals to randomly torture, maim, rape and gruesomely murder innocent civilians.
The 51-year-old “Jungle Jabah” got a 30-year jail sentence in the US multiple charges, including immigration fraud, perjury coupled with heinous atrocities he committed during the Liberian civil war.
Jabateh is the third former Liberian warlord to be sent to jail abroad. In 2008, Chuckie Taylor, son of former President Charles Taylor received 97 years jail sentence in the U.S, on charges of torture and conspiracy.
His father was sentenced by the Sierra Leone War Crimes Court in The Hague in 2012 and is currently serving a 50 year jail term in Britain, for his role in the erstwhile Sierra Leonean war.
Meanwhile, FOCUS has called on the Liberian government to muster the courage for establishment of tribunals to prosecute major actors of the civil crises in order to serve as deterrent for would be war mongers.
The group said many of former warlords are now considering Liberia as a safe haven, where they are given government posts or elected to positions of prominence in appreciation for atrocities committed during the civil crises.