ONE of Liberia's most notorious rebel commanders, known as General Butt Naked, has returned to the nation his troops terrorised to confess, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.
Joshua Milton Blahyi, 37, who lives in Ghana, has returned to face his homeland's truth and reconciliation commission.
His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon's practice of charging naked into battle to terrify the enemy. "I could be ele
ctrocuted. I could be hanged," Blahyi said. "But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go." The civil war, in which an estimated 250,000 people died in a nation of three million, was characterised by the eating of human hearts and playing football with human skulls.
Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the Devil – typically "the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat," he said. Between making a pact with the Devil circa 1980 and the time he stopped fighting in 1996, he said "more than 20,000 people fell victim (to me and my men]".
Some say the confession is proof that Liberia needs a war crimes' court, not a commission.
The commission, modelled on that of post-apartheid South Africa, has been taking testimony from victims and former rebels for two years, urging a full accounting of atrocities.
While the commission cannot charge killers, it can recommend that charges be brought.
