Main News & Feature

Monrovia Security Alert a Ploy

The massive security stop and search that went on in Monrovia earlier this week is now reported to have been a government ploy to divert attention from its row with the Catholic Church. Sources tell the Orbit Correspondent if a presidential meeting with the religious leaders had not gone well, the state of alert would have been used to label the church as supportive of an assassination plot against the President.

Throughout Tuesday night to early Wednesday morning, the dreaded and wrongly named Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU) soldiers were posted all over Monrovia, stopping and searching vehicles. No official statement was made, but security officials made it known that they had gotten "intelligence information" that assassins were in Monrovia to kill Charles Taylor. The government claimed the alleged group entered from neighboring Sierra Leone.

The Orbit Correspondent said the search came to an abrupt end when the Liberian Council of Churches agreed to cut off its three day boycott, which began on Monday, November 18, in solidarity with Catholic Archbishop Michael Francis. A former Charles Taylor rebel, now majority leader of the House of Representatives, accused the prelate of being involved in the killing of American Catholic nuns during the 1992 invasion of Monrovia by Taylor forces. Sando Johnson also said the Archbishop fathered a child when he was a teacher in Nimba County.

The accusations came at a time when the Catholic Church itself was doing an official investigation, the result of which could lead to the canonization of the American nuns by the Vatican. Since the Sando Johnson outburst, Liberians in and out of the country have been condemning him for challenging the credibility of Francis, who they say has been a champion of human rights.

The government of Sierra Leone, under President Tejan Kabbah, has frequently been criticised by anti-Taylor elements for "bending-over-backwards" to appease Taylor over security concerns, our correspondent says. Currently, Former Liberian Rural Development Minister Amos Lincoln, a companion of former ULIMO-J Leader Roosevelt Johnson, is said to be in prison in Freetown on account of a Taylor intervention that the man is "plotting something" against him from Sierra Leone. Another Liberian, David Bropleh, was some weeks ago deported from Sierra Leone due to the same type of allegations.

But the Freetown gesture has never been enough for Taylor, and it was convenient for him to point finger at Sierra Leone as a means of diverting attention from the Church decision to bring international attention once again to bad government conduct in Monrovia, our correspondent says.

To keep the friction with Catholics under control, Taylor is reported to have now set up a "small committee" to look into the Sando Johnson comments. Cousin Jonathan Taylor, Minister of State at the Mansion, and Confidant Victoria Reffell have been named as members of the "small committee.