Unearthing the past to chart the future with a mindset of purity is the goal sought through the current reconciliation processes in the country. But achieving that goal is no easy task as harsher feelings still persist within various quarters of Liberian society.

	• Mr. Jackson E. Doe

One of the key high points of the civil war was the capture and killing of the late president Samuel Kanyon Doe by the INPFL headed by Prince Johnson, who now occupies legislative chambers in the new dispensation.

But his recent claims that he has reconciled with the family of the late president has not gone down well with a relative of Doe, a development that captured the attention of The Analyst in this edition.

A relative of the slain President Samuel Kanyon Doe, yesterday denied claims by Nimba County Senator Prince Y. Johnson that families of the former Liberian leader have reconciled with him.

Describing the statement of Prince Johnson as bogus, Mr. George Wright who spoke at the ongoing TRC hearings at the Monrovia City Hall said Johnson’s forces captured and killed President Samuel K. Doe in Monrovia in September 1990.

According to him, it is wisdom enough for reconciliation to start in the country instead of making reference to alleged talks in Nigeria. George Wright, now administrator of the late president’s estate told commissioners of the TRC that reconciliation rites between the Doe family and Prince Johnson in Nigeria were imposed on the family.

“Prince Johnson killed President Doe right here in Liberia, so why can’t he reconcile with us here in Liberia but in Nigeria. He committed the act here and not in Nigeria. So if he wants to reconcile with the Doe family, it must be done right here in Liberia where he killed Doe,” Wright said.

He said as far the family was concerned there was no reconciliation between they and Mr. Johnson.

Though the Doe estate administrator did not name the mediator of the Nigerian reconciliation, but he said that the reconciliatory ceremony in Nigeria was forced upon the family by a Nigerian evangelist and hence they have not reconciled with Mr. Johnson.

It can be recalled from the long history of the Liberian civil conflict that forces of the defunct Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), commanded by Mr. Johnson captured and killed President Doe on September 9, 1990.

On the day of his capture and subsequent killing, Doe had traveled to the Freeport of Monrovia, in what was seen as a consolidation of confidence boosting measure with Prince Johnson, who was then seen as the most reasonable of his rebel adversaries.

On this trip that was overseen by the West African Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) Doe and some of his entourage were confronted with a barrage of bullets from Johnson’s forces after which he was captured and detained at the INPFL Caldwell base.

But following the detention of the president, a video footage showed Johnson and his men torturing him as they interrogated him for the Liberian people’s monies.

In the same video footage, the half naked captured president is seen sweating profusely, begging for mercy from Johnson and his forces while one of the rebel commanders slices off both ears with a sharp knife.

The TRC has come of age square since it was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by an act of the Transitional Legislative Assembly (NTLA) known as the TRC Act of 2005.

The TRC is purposely established to “promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation,” and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.

Despite these strides by the Commission, there have been flurry of calls from certain quarters of Liberian society for the establishment of a War Crimes Court, which is the most appropriate avenue for the prosecution of such characters in war scenarios.

Though the chief proponent of this claim has been the Forum for the Establishment of the War Crimes Court in Liberia headed by Mulbah Morlu, the Catholic Church in Liberia recently declared its support for such courts reminiscing its share of losses sustained in five nuns who were helplessly murdered during the 1992 Octopus Operation launched by the forces of Charles Taylor to capture Monrovia from ECOMOG peacekeepers.