One witness saw him execute a pleading relief worker accused of profiteering. In a video, he chugged beer while his men hacked off an ousted president's ears hours before his tortured death. Once a powerful faction leader, more recently an evangelical preacher-in-exile, Prince Johnson helped drive Liberia into a catastrophic civil war. Today, he's a senator-elect promising to rebuild this West African nation — and he is not the only lawmaker with a notorious past. "We're talking about a new Liberia, a new future. We have an enormous job to do," Johnson said during an interview in Monrovia, sitting in a faux-leather chair at one of this bombed-out city's hotels. "The country is in ruin, total ruin. I've come back to help rebuild."
Johnson's brutal past is no secret, even if he says little now about his role in a war that took the lives of an estimated 200,000 people, turned millions into refugees and left even the capital without electricity or running water. Liberians can only hope that the rise of Johnson and others tainted by charges of brutality or corruption won't undermine their chances of recovering and building a democracy.
| My guess is that it will. |
"It's embarrassing," said Mamadou Kromah, 24, who sells videos showing snippits of the ex-warlord overseeing the torture of just-captured President Samuel Doe. "Prince Johnson should be put on trial, not put into office." Johnson's militia seized Doe and tortured him to death in 1990. A video shows the leader in his underwear, tied up and bloody. Doe begs to be spared, but Johnson orders the terrified leader's ears severed. Around the same time, Johnson personally executed a Liberian relief worker he accused of profiteering from rice sales, calling him a "traitor." An Associated Press photographer who witnessed the scene reported the crumpled victim briefly lifted his head and asked "Why, why?" before Johnson finished him off. During the war, Johnson also reportedly killed some of his own commanders and briefly took 22 foreigners hostage in a bid to provoke international intervention.
The war ended two years ago when warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor stepped down as rebels advanced on the capital. Johnson's militia fought fierce street battles with Taylor's forces in the early 1990s, but he left in 1992 and became an evangelical preacher in Nigeria's Christ Deliverance Ministry in Lagos. Johnson returned for the first time last year. Despite his ruthlessness, he remains popular among many for taking a stand against Taylor and overthrowing Doe, who took power in a coup a decade earlier. Johnson's 34 percent of the vote in his native Nimba County was the highest won by any senator. "My regret is that we fought one another for nothing. It was a senseless war," Johnson said. "Whatever reason I may give you now for getting involved in the war, it does not erase the fact that this country was destroyed and needs to be rebuilt."
| Johnson was a giggling sadist. At one point he'd have gotten my vote for the most evil person in the world. He can preach and raise his palm to heaven all he wants, but if there is a God, he's going to rot in hell. I hope he knows that, and I hope he catches something lingering and painful and dies his own agonizing death. |
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