By our Staff Writer
A US-based human rights group, Universal Human Rights International (UHRI) says it will shortly file criminal and civil lawsuits against ex-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, some of her officials and former Liberian warlords to account for their alleged pillaging of the country’s resources and war crimes.
After completing her second and final six-year term in office, Sirleaf handed power over to Weah, 51 on Monday in the first peaceful transfer of power in Liberia in 73 years from one elected President to another.
And in her last state of the nation address, Africa’s first elected female President admitted that she had failed to successfully fight corruption, which she described as a “vampire” while also admitting her government’s failure to achieve reconciliation.
The UHRI, headed by prominent Liberian rights advocate, Rev. Torli Krua, made the lawsuits threat on Wednesday in a statement congratulating the newly inaugurated President George Weah and the Liberian people for the peaceful conduct of elections and transfer of power on January 22, 2018.
UHRI is a Boston-based rights group established many years ago to promote the rights of Africans refugees and those on the continent and other parts of the world.
“To further help you clean house of Sirleaf Hijackers, in 72 hours, we shall file criminal and civil lawsuits against Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former officials who enriched themselves with the Liberian people’s money and all the warlords who have been turned into millionaires from their government jobs,” the rights group’s statement said.
Krua welcomed Weah’s Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) campaign mantra, “Change for hope”, which he said “resonates with us because we were forced into exile and forgotten by our government while the perpetrators of the senseless war have been turned into millionaires through ill gained wealth from their public service.”
He said “victims of the Liberian civil war in the diaspora whose lives were destroyed by the organizers and financiers of the Liberian civil war express support” for Weah’s administration, denounced the recycling of former officials of the Sirleaf government in the new CDC-led government.
“That is why recycling the corruption of the past will be challenged by criminal and civil lawsuits and through street demonstrations across the United States of America and other nations under the rule of law,” the UHRI statement said.
Meanwhile, in a seven-count proposal, the rights group is calling for the Weah government to implement the recommendations of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the withdrawal of the nominations of “President Sirleaf’s surrogates and former Senator Gbezhzongar Findley.”
The TRC report in 2010 recommended the barring for 30 years financiers and backers of the Liberian civil war which took the lives of UN-estimated 25,000 people.
The TRC report also called for justice to be meted out against a number of players and actors through prosecution of those who bore the greatest responsibilities in the carnage through prosecution for economic crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Other recommendations to Weah are to “Convene a sovereign national conference urgently. Liberia needs more than a new president, we need a new system of governance.”
“Our system is broken and corrupt by design; kindly issue an executive order welcoming all Liberians forced into exile to return home for reconciliation by waving visa requirements just as Nigerians and ECOWAS citizens are welcome without visa to visit Liberia,” said UHRI among other things.