https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...about-to-catch-up-with-liberia-war-criminals/ General Butt Naked. From monster to minister: Is the past about to catch up with Liberia’s war criminals? They got away with murder during years of bloodshed. Now, a proposed war crimes court is making hardened killers uneasy In the weeks before he found Jesus, the evangelist formerly known as General Butt Naked reckons he was sacrificing four or five children a day. Murder had long come naturally to him. He was only 11 when the elders who had steeped him in the ways of witchcraft first handed him the sacrificial knife. But never had he killed with such intensity and ferocity as during those weeks in mid-1996 when Liberia’s first civil war reached its calamitous climax on the blood-soaked streets of Monrovia, the country’s battered capital. Several times a day, the warlord and his battalion of boys, all as naked as he was, would emerge into the maelstrom, firing wildly as they added their own breed of terror to the chaos. Yet the blood-letting always began before a single bullet had been fired. Before each engagement, Butt Naked, pagan priest and holy warrior, would lay a child face-down on the sacrificial table, slice open his victim's back and pull out their still-beating heart, thus ensuring magical protection for the coming battle. General Butt naked in action “For the ritual to be effective, the child’s heart still had to be alive to make it acceptable to the deity,” he recalls. “If I was fighting I would sacrifice a child every time I went out to fight, and as I was fighting four or five times a day, I made four or five sacrifices a day.” More than 20 years after Liberia’s second civil war ended, Gen. Butt Naked – a nom de guerre Evangelist Joshua Milton Blahyi no longer cares to use – has never appeared in court for the war crimes he so freely admits to. Neither, for that matter, has anyone else, not in Liberia, at least. Liberia’s killers are no longer resting easy, however. Last month, Joseph Boakai, Liberia’s new president, fulfilled an election pledge by formally accepting a recommendation made 15 years ago by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to establish a war crimes court. For years, rifle-clutching men and boys plagued the county’s streets Credit: PEWEE FLOMOKU/AP For many, the order means that two decades of injustice may now be addressed, giving Liberia the chance to heal festering psychological wounds and end a culture of impunity that has prevented its people from thriving. Others, notably politicians involved in the war and their supporters, warn that the court will do the exact opposition, re-opening wounds and potentially pitching Liberia back into civil war. Some say it could even pave the way for Russian mercenaries to gain a foothold in one of the most stable and pro-American states in West Africa, an increasingly volatile region where the Kremlin’s influence is on the rise. Blahyi preaches to his congregation Credit: Eduardo Soteras/The Telegraph Brutal conflicts swept Africa in the aftermath of the Cold War as the United States and the Soviet Union withdrew patronage from the continent’s dictators. Yet few ever seemed as blood-curdling as the two fought in Liberia between 1989 and 2003. For years, rifle-clutching men and boys, incongruously clad in lurid wigs and feather boas – voodoo charms against the bullets – sauntered down Monrovia’s corpse-strewn streets. Others, dressed in wedding gowns, negligees or nothing at all, whooped and jigged before the television cameras, a danse macabre performed to the soundtrack of gunfire. This was African war at its most atavistic, conjuring up images that seemed to confirm the worst Western stereotypes of the “Dark Continent”. The war claimed 250,000 lives, 10 per cent of the pre-war population. More than half of all Liberians fled their homes. The legacy of war remains profound. Liberia is one of the 10 poorest countries on earth, according to the World Bank. More than half the population lives in poverty. Some 56 per cent of children have never been to school. Only one in four Liberians has access to electricity. The Generalissimo.
