By: By Michael Rubin, National Security Journal
Against the backdrop of African conflict, Liberia’s two turn-of-the-century wars were fierce, replete with forced impressment of child soldiers, torture, rape, and summary executions. The wars also had an economic overtone as the blood diamond trade enabled militia leaders to purchase weaponry and pay salaries. Political leaders also leveraged their militias into lucrative contracts, winning at the barrel of a gun what they could not through honest negotiations.
While Liberia is at peace, its recovery remains shaky. In 2009, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission directed the presidency to establish a War and Economic Crimes Court. Successive presidents, including Nobel Peace Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, ignored the directive, though it was too inconvenient. Her successor, George Weah, traded protection for power and sheltered many of those suspected of war-era economic crimes, most notably Monrovia Mayor Jefferson Koijee. Weah lost reelection in 2023, and Joseph Boakai, Sirlead’s vice president, took the helm. Nearly 80 years old, Boakai explained to his friends that he wanted a legacy and that the War and Economic Crimes Court was it.
He got off to a strong start, appointing Jonathan Massaquoi, the lawyer for Gibril Massaquoi (no relation), an accused war criminal tried in Finland and Liberia but acquitted when it emerged that he was a victim of the Swiss NGO Civitas Maxima’s cash-for-testimony scheme. Gibril was a confidential witness under the protection of the Sierra Leone Special Tribunal in Sierra Leone when witnesses coached by Civitas Maxima and its partners falsely said they had personally witnessed him commit crimes in Liberia; the witnesses then admitted the Swiss NGO’s Liberian partner paid them to deliver the false testimony.
Jonathan Massaquoi envisioned a hybrid model for the court, akin to the successful Sierra Leone Special Tribunal that the United Nations and Sierra Leone government jointly established. The Sierra Leone Court successfully prosecuted a number of war criminals including former Liberian President Charles Taylor. The benefit of a hybrid court is two-fold. First, it marries the resources and experience of international experts with the legitimacy and local knowledge of national experts and, second, it creates mentorship and training opportunities that can advance the capacity of investigators, lawyers, and judges in the home society.
The human rights industry can be a racket, though, as the Civitas Maxima scandal shows. Doing what is necessary for the next grant application too often trumps justice, and politics too often trumps human rights. Any group can claim to speak on behalf of civil society, though such positions are often self-appointed and unregulated.
So it is now in Liberia. The corruption surrounding the botched Liberia war crimes prosecutions—Gibril was the tip of the iceberg—should be a cautionary tale about the drawbacks of relying exclusively on local partners or embracing a model that confuses legitimacy with local origination.
Rather than root out the corruption at the heart of the botched Liberia prosecutions, groups such as Human Rights Watch and the California-based Center for Justice and Accountability circled the wagons to protect their local partners from accountability for their own criminality. Beth Van Schaack, a former Center for Justice and Accountability official-turned-political appointee in the Biden administration took matters further when she used her State Department perch allegedly to threaten to withhold funding for the War and Economic Crimes Court. Her demand? Boakai must fire Jonathan Massaquoi and place the court instead in the hands of the self-defined civil society groups at the heart of the scandal. Rather than take seriously the evidence against her former Liberian partners, Van Schaack takes the weasel approach, suggesting any criticism endangers civil society.
Boakai is right that standing up the War and Economic Crime Court can cement his legacy. It is a move long overdue, but he must stand up to personal agendas, human rights industry profiteers, and the simply misguided. Today, Boakai is failing, however. He affirms his staunchest critics’ concern that he is too old, weak and deferential. He should not listen to individual ambassadors who do not have the power of the purse, but pretend they can reward or punish individuals using U.S. government grants.
Liberians need justice to succeed, but that justice must come in partnership with the international community. The Sierra Leone Special Tribunal should be the model, not Civitas Maxima.
