IPNews-Monrovia: The Judge of Criminal Court “A” at the Temple of Justice in Monrovia has summoned government prosecution to a conference over the persistent detention of eight Ivoirians currently held over suspicion of subversion by Liberian security forces.
Judge Willie ruling stated that the conference is to amicably discuss the release of the eight Ivoirians refugees, who are presently behind bars for the past eight years without being extradited to their country of origin.
Judge Roosevelt Z. Willie in a communication dated Wednesday, September 2, 2020, the conference is scheduled for Tuesday, September 8, 2020.
Judge Willie also invited to the conference Cosmas Chanda, County Director, United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR and Rev. Fetus Logan, Executive Director, Liberia Repatriation and Resettlement Commission, LRRRC.
It can recalled that last year, Criminal Court A re-arrested and incarcerated the eight Ivoirians to be re-tried after they were set free, averting their extradition.
Defendants Komande Mohegnan Vakery, Nemlin Rerik Anbtiube, Frank Oliver Nioule, Junior Nioule, Edward O. Nioule, Julien Badison Toure and Blao Nocaise were set free by Criminal Court A in 2019.
The eight Ivorian nationals had been in detention at the Monrovia Central Prison since August 2012.
They were arrested in Grand Gedeh County after they had allegedly escaped the Ivory Coast for the alleged commission of the crimes of murder, theft of property, rape, and Arson leveled against them by the Ivorian government.
After their arrest and subsequent detention at the Monrovia Central Prison, the Ivorian Government then requested the Liberian government to extradite them to face prosecution for the alleged aforementioned crimes.
During the hearing of the case at the Criminal Court ‘A’, Judge Willie ruled that the defendants be released due to the failure of the requesting state ( Ivory Coast) to take seized of the defendants within the period provided for under the Criminal procedure Law, after state lawyers interpose no objection when the defendants lawyer moved for the Extradition to be dismissed and have the defendants released.
Two weeks after they were released and turnover to the UNHCR to be taken to third world country, state lawyers again filed a motion requesting the court to rescind its previous ruling that cleared the defendants of Extradition.
In the prosecution’s motion to rescind the judgment, state lawyers argued that they do not have problem with the release of the defendants but that the issue of national security and the interest of Liberia were not taken into consideration during the legal proceedings.
Judge Willie then ruled: “accordingly, this court is inclined to rescind its ruling of June 24,2019 dismissing the Extradition and releasing the defendants to the LRRC and UNHCR on the following grounds: Motion to dismiss is not the proper remedy to seek from the ruling of a magistrate or Justice of the Peace ordering the committal of a fugitive following an extradition hearing; The motion to dismiss, which was granted the Movants/Appellants was secured in bad faith as the intent/outcome of the conferences was not to dismiss the extradition based on the merits of the case as was spread on the minutes of court.”
He continued: “therefore, the ruling of June 24, 2019, is hereby rescinded based on the above-stated reasons and the sheriff of this court is hereby ordered to re-arrest the movants/Appellants and incarcerate them at the Monrovia Central Prison.
“Meanwhile, this court having rescinded its ruling to release the Ivorians (appellants) hereby sound this caveat to the Liberian Government to work out the process as provided for by law to have this matter concluded; otherwise, this court will be constrained during the August Term of Court to Sua Sponte and assign the Writ of Habeas Corpus for the Government of Liberia to bring forth the defendants before court to show cause for their continued incarceration.”
It may be recalled in 2012, Human Watch accused the Liberia government of reluctance to stopping mercenaries and militias based on its soil from recruiting child soldiers and launching a series of deadly raids on villages across the border in Ivory Coast, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Right Watch stated that thousands of Liberian gunmen fought alongside Ivorian fighters in a four-month post-election conflict in Ivory Coast last year, most on behalf of former President Laurent Gbagbo, and withdrew back to Liberia following Gbagbo’s capture in April 2011.
Those combatants, accused of massacring civilians during the war, have conducted four cross-border attacks on villages in western Ivory Coast since July that killed 40 people, a report published by the New York-based rights campaigner said.
Fighters were quoted as saying they were receiving funding from Ghana and from mining operations in Liberia to mount future attacks. And while Liberia had made dozens of arrests of suspected mercenaries since the end of the Ivory Coast war, nearly all had since been released, the report said.
“For well over a year, the Liberian government has had its head in the sand,” said Matt Wells, West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“Rather than uphold its responsibility to prosecute or extradite those involved in international crimes, Liberian authorities have stood by as many of these same people recruit child soldiers and carry out deadly cross-border attacks.”
A Liberian government spokesman said he could not immediately comment because he had not yet seen the report.
Investigations by the United Nations and rights groups have implicated Liberian mercenaries and pro-Gbagbo militias in civilian massacres in the commercial capital Abidjan and in the country’s volatile west.
Gbagbo was charged with criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the violence. He is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
U.N. officials and diplomats do not believe the fighters have the capacity to destabilize the government of new President Alassane Ouattara. However some fear they could inflame long-running land disputes in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-producing west.
