-Sister Lauree Reeves wants CDC Gov’t “to come to her rescue”
By Frank Sainworla, Jr. fsainworla@yahoo.com
A local pressure group and the family of Dr. Agnes Reeves-Taylor, the ex-wife of former Liberian President Charles Taylor have launched a campaign in Monrovia to press for her release from a prison in the United Kingdom (UK).
In early June 2017, British police charged Madam Taylor with “four torture committed between 1989 and 1991,” the London-based Reuters news agency reported on June 2, 2017. Agnes was married to Mr. Taylor at the height of the Liberian civil war in the 1990s.
But a local pressure group, Patriotic Consciousness Association of Liberia (PACAL) and the family have questioned the reason for her arrest. They expressed dissatisfaction over the indifference the Liberian government has shown in the case involving one of its citizens in a foreign land.
Both PACAL and Madam Reeves-Taylor’s family on Monday April 22, 2019 told a news conference at the YMCA auditorium in Monrovia that her name was not on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) list of war crimes perpetrators. And neither has she been charged with any crime committed in Liberia.
The Liberian government’s hands-off posture in the case of Taylor’s war time wife is similar that during the war crimes trial of former Liberian leader, who is currently serving a 50-year jail sentence in Britain. He was convicted aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity in neighbouring Sierra Leone by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone.
During that trial, the Unity Party government of former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf neither sent a team of legal expert nor lawyers to observe the long-running trial of an ex-President and citizen of Liberia in The Hague, something that the former regime came under criticism for in some quarters.
PACAL said it has already written formal letters to Liberia’s Foreign Minister Gbehzongar Findley and the Chief of Mission at the British Embassy in Monrovia regarding the ongoing case of Agnes Reeves-Taylor.
In a letter to Foreign Minister Findley, distributed among the media, members of PACAL said they: “wish to register our deep disappointment and consternation over the Liberian government’s conspicuous silence and lack of interest in the wrongful arrest, prosecution and prolonged incarceration in the UK prison of a prominent Liberian citizen, Dr. Agnese Reeves-Taylor, former Liberian Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization (IMO).”
The sister of Agnes, Ms. Lauree Reeves, a famous and longtime Liberian broadcast Journalist said the family was still baffled as to why she was being denied bail or held in British prison, when she has not featured on a list of 200 or more persons, either for war crimes or terrorism.
“She (Dr. Agnes Reeves-Taylor) has never been flagged as person of interest. Liberia has never charged or accused her of any crimes—not on any TRC list. Everyone held or is being picked up in Europe are on that list.”
According to Ms. Lauree Reeves, legal experts have said the arrest and continuous detention of her sister “has no merit”.
“She’s the only one locked up in prison not on that list. That’s what I find troubling.
The sister of Madam Reeves-Taylor denied that the ongoing PACAL campaign in her favour was being financed by her family.
Meanwhile, the family of former President Taylor’s ex-wife is calling on the CDC government and other institutions “to come to the rescue of its citizen”.
“She should be sent back to Liberia, because the Liberian government has not charged with or accused her of any crime,” the sister of Dr. Agnes Reeves Taylor pleaded at Monday’s news conference.
But other individuals and groups have since welcomed the arrest and detention of Dr. Taylor-Reeves.
“The actions taken by the United Kingdom to address crimes committed during Liberia’s brutal civil war will no doubt be welcomed by victims in Liberia,” said Elise Keppler, associate director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch said in a statement issued on June 3, 2017.
“The NPFL committed horrific abuses against civilians but no one has ever been held to account for the crimes. The Liberian authorities should themselves take steps to ensure that those responsible for civil-war-era crimes are brought to justice,” the Human Rights Watch official added.