Prince Johnson, a former Liberian warlord, and a key player in the 1989-2003 back-to-back civil wars, died Thursday aged 72. Officials from his party and the Senate told AFP.
Johnson, was infamously known for killing Liberia’s President Samuel K. Doe in 1990 as he was seen sipping beer in a video as fighters loyal to him tortured Doe to death in 1990.
The death of Doe was an early bloody episode that would plunge Liberia into two civil wars, which killed some 250,000 people and ravaged the economy.
“Yes, we lost him this morning. He passed away at Hope for Women (health centre)”, Wilfred Bangura, a senior official in Prince Johnson’s Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction party, told AFP.
“Senator Johnson was the longest-serving senator,” said Siaffa Jallah, deputy director of press at the Senate.
“It is true that he died this morning,” family member Moses Ziah told Reuters
He was serving as head of the notorious rebel faction, the Independent National Patriotic Front.
Prince Johnson, who hailed from the northern region of Nimba, later became a senator between 2006 and 2024 and also preacher in an evangelical church where he enjoyed wide popularity.
The late warlord later said he regretted the murder and sought reconciliation with Doe’s family.
He never faced trial even after the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission named him among those recommended for prosecution for war crimes, saying his group had committed rapes and killings.
He was also a leading opponent of the creation of a tribunal that would try civil war-related crimes.
He threw his support behind former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in 2011 and endorsed George Weah in the run-off against Sirleaf’s ruling party successor, Joseph Boakai, in 2017.
However, he switched his support to Boakai in the 2023 election in which Boakai defeated Weah in a run-off.
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