By Kemo Cham
A Liberian political activist has launched a campaign to free former president and convicted war criminal, Charles Taylor.
Menipakei Dumoe is seeking the support of the Sierra Leone and Liberian governments to achieve his goal. He is calling on the two countries to work together as brothers and sisters to free one of their own.
Mr Dumoe told Politico that he is passionately appealing to Sierra Leoneans to forgive Mr Taylor.
Taylor is serving a 50-year jail term in a UK prison for his role in Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. The former Liberian warlord who later became the country’s 22nd president, served six years in office before he was himself forced out under pressure from western powers and the advancing Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) rebel forces.
Taylor was subsequently indicted while in exile in Nigeria by the defunct UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which tried people deemed as bearing the greatest responsibility for the crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s war. He was found guilty on 11 count charges that included terrorism, rape, murder and the use of child soldiers. He has been in prison for 17 years now.
Dumoe, a senatorial candidate in the upcoming mid-term elections in Liberia, has made securing the release of the man he considers his mentor as his campaign message. He however insisted that his desire to see Taylor out of jail was purely based on his love for the 72-year-old former president’s love for his country and Africa.
Dumoe also believes that Taylor was unfairly singled out by western powers whom he said were out to divide Africa, pointing out that British and other European actors who shipped weapons to fuel the Sierra Leonean conflict were let off the hook.
“Taylor is serving an excessive punishment for his role in Sierra Leone. He was charged for aiding the RUF, but his sentence is longer than all the others convicted of actually committing the crimes,” Dumoe said.
“The release of Taylor will mark a symbolic end of the era where westerners used us against each other. We are all victims,” he added.
According to Dumoe, a number of recent international developments gave him the courage to seek this course of action, including the release of former Ivory Coast president, Laurent Gbagbo, who was himself indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
Dumoe is the Acting Chairman of the Council of Patriots (COP), a pressure group that seeks to hold the Liberian government to account. However, COP has been accused by the Liberian authorities of threatening the country’s piece. Its substantive leader, Henry Costa, was briefly detained in Freetown while fleeing Liberia where he was pursued on alleged immigration offenses.
Dumoe, who has himself been at odds with the government since he assumed the leadership of the group, is contesting the senatorial seat as an independent candidate, as the COP is not a registered political party.
“My call for Taylor's release is not for votes or popularity but it coincides with shifts in the international arena that I believe is favorable to our cause. Laurent Gbargbo has been freed. Several African countries with the backing of the AU have exited the ICC,” Dumoe said in an interview from Bong Country in north-central part of Liberia, where he is currently on the campaign trail.
The Sierra Leone war is seen as a spillover of Liberia’s two civil wars [1989-1996 and 1999-2003].
Charles Taylor, as head of the domineering National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) rebel forces, was a major player in both wars. He would overrun the Liberian capital, Monrovia in 1996 and subsequently taken over much of the country.
He presided over elections in 1997 and won with a landslide.
Although he never personally participated in the Liberian war as a combatant, Dumoe said his father fought with the NPFL rebels of Taylor. He also said he lost many of his friends and relatives due to injustices perpetrated by people who Taylor fought against.
Dumoe was chief of Staff of Senator Howard Taylor, current vice president of Liberia and ex-wife of Mr Taylor.
Dumoe said he’s written a letter to the Sierra Leonean Ambassador in Monrovia with whom he wants to meet to formally present his appeal to the Bio administration.
He said he also intended to visit Freetown to engage “anyone who would listen”, and “more importantly” the foreign Ministry, Ministry of Justice, Parliament and civil society.
“My main message to Sierra Leoneans is that they have been lied to for over two decades. Their political class and former colonial masters have fed them lies,” he said.
“We as Africans need to come together and show the rest of the world that we are not stupid, that we will no longer be divided,” he added.
Dumoe said if Taylor is not forgiven and released, there might attempts by future Liberian generations to seek reparations from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast for their own role in supporting the Liberian wars.
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