Truth and Justice on Trial in Liberia

Abstract

ON 8 JANUARY, ALMOST WITHOUT NOTICE ELSEWHERE, PUBLIC HEARINGS of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began at the Centennial Pavilion, a large mock-Roman structure flanked by the country's national museum and an imposing Baptist Church in downtown Monrovia. The TRC had been established by an Act of the Legislature in 2005, and prior to the public hearings had collected 16,000 statements from victims as well as alleged perpetrators of the country's nearly fifteen years of brutal civil war, 1989?2003. The timing of the hearings appeared propitious, for they coincided with the opening of the trial, for crimes against humanity and related offences, of Liberia's former President Charles Ghankay Taylor, several thousand miles away at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. In contrast to the TRC hearings, the opening of the trial attracted significant international media coverage. It appeared that at long last accountability ? and ?closure? ? was being sought...