Word: liberian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Most damaging to the president, political scandals are piling up. A hundred cars given to Liberia by Arcelor Mittal in 2008 and intended to improve logistics for government officials found their way into the hands of legislators responsible for approving mining deals. Last year, according to witnesses, a senior Liberian official greeted a delegation of foreign funders at his office apparently drunk and demanded one delegate sit properly or "get your ass out of here." The same month Johnson Sirleaf admitted she was "hurt ... deeply wounded" by the "very embarrassing" publication of e-mails from her former assistant Willis Knuckles...
...that oversees the country's recovery - that a company headed by former Justice Minister Philip Banks took out copyright on the new national law code. The U.S. embassy in Monrovia found it had to pay Banks' company $5,000 for its 20 copies, says one Western diplomat; in theory, Liberian courts must do the same. The U.N. panel believes the firm's "grounds for claiming copyright are questionable and ethically dubious." Little wonder that Johnson Sirleaf struggles. "The President's default position is to do the right thing," says the diplomat. "When she makes the wrong decision - and it does...
...That image has now taken a hit. In its final report, released yesterday, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a body modeled on South Africa's historic truth commission, says Johnson Sirleaf should be banned from government for 30 years for her early support of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Taylor, who played a central role in Liberia's conflict, is on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity that stem from his part in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. (See pictures of death and life in Sierra Leone...
...Perhaps. But in a conflict that went on for nearly two decades, it's hard to find any Liberian officials whose hands are completely clean. When she testified at the TRC, Johnson Sirleaf admitted that during the early years of the war she had brought food, supplies and financial assistance to Taylor. At the time, she said, she wanted to see an end to the repressive and tyrannical regime of President Samuel Doe. If she cast her lot with a war criminal, she said, she did so unwittingly. (Read a Q&A with Johnson Sirleaf...
...wound down in 2002 after 11 years of fighting marked by some of the most brutal human-rights abuses in history, much of that fueled by competition over the country's diamond fields, the leaders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and other militias, as well as their sponsor, Liberian President Charles Taylor, negotiated themselves an amnesty...