Coroner's Corner: Samuel Doe (21st President of Liberia)

Samuel Doe with then Secretary of Defense of the United States Caspar W. Weinberger outside the Pentagon in 1982 when the going was good.

Samuel Kanyon Doe hails from the
Krahn indigenous minority of Liberia and is the 21st President of Liberia from 1980-1990. Doe came to power through the bloody coup d'état killing of President William R. Tolbert, Jr also executing 26 Tolbert's supporters. That did not stop there as Doe publicly executed a further 10 some days later. Also Doe made former Ministers of Tolbert to march naked in the streets of Liberia before again publicly executing them. Doe also captured the son of Presidenf Tolbert Jnr (Benedict) from the French Embassy in Monrovia ( Violating Diplomatic Immunity) and reportedly throw Benedict out of a military aircraft while he was transported to a prison in Lofa County. 

Even at all these, Doe had the support of the USA which Doe reciprocated by siding the USA during the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the 1980's. Doe favoured the West by opening up Liberian ports to Canadian, Chinese and European ships attracting foreign investors  and making Liberia a tax haven for foreign firms.

It was not surprising that Doe soon fell out of favour with America after the waning of the Soviet Union, hence America felt their was no need having him by their side. This came after America were the only country to praise and applaud his kangaroo 1985 elections which returned him as President (Democratically elected this time). This came after various protests and calls by various African and Europeans countries that the election was a fraudulent one. It is also alleged by several coup plotters of 1980 coup that a CIA agent was the one who provided the coup plotters the Presidential Mansion description of President Tolbert and even his Wife Victoria confirmed it before her death in 1997, that her husband was murdered by a "White Skinned" masked soldier.  This became clearer after Charles Taylor confessed to have been assisted to escape a Boston Jail with four others by CIA agents in 1985. Charles Taylor on his part was sacked and wanted by the Doe government for diverting $1 million public funds meant for the General Services Agency (GSA) to his private bank account in the US. Taylor was at that time, the Director-General of the government firm. Taylor after been aided by the CIA agents to escape jail landed in Libya where non-other than President Muammar Gaddafi welcomed and trained him in guerrilla war fare in preparation of toppling the government of Samuel Doe. Taylor was assisted by both President Gaddafi and President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast (The same man who funded the toppling of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in February 1966). Taylor attacked Doe by crossing from the Ivorian border and forming the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) in 1990.

Doe was captured on September 9, 1990 at the ECOMOG Peacekeeping Headquarters in Monrovia by Prince Yomie Johnson. Doe was severally humiliated and tortured. In a well publicized video still on Youtube, Doe's hands and legs were tied with a rope with more than two "Mysterious Unidentified White Skinned Soldiers" confirming the fact that some other foreign nations got involved. These soldiers beat up Doe severally that blood was all over his body and in the video "The once Indomitable Lion Soldier -Doe was seen begging and pleading for mercy like a commoner".  Johnson was sipping a Budweiser beer as a  junior officer was manually fanning him and all soldiers praising Johnson. Also from the video Johnson was seen dishing out instructions and watching as Doe had his ear chopped off and everyone jubilating like they had just won a FIFA World Cup. Doe was later killed and his body severally mutilated, his fingers, toes and ears were all chopped off and his dead body left naked in the streets of Monrovia.

Many years after the killing of Doe, Karma will have it's way as most of the participants of his murder ( Gaddafi, Felix Houphouet- Boigny and Charles Taylor) are either dead or spending time in jail. It is clear that indeed "He who kills by the sword dies by the sword" (Matthew 26:52) as the Holy Bible says.