Belgian police arrested Martina Johnson in Ghent on September 17, 2014. She is charged with war crimes
and crimes against humanity committed during the First Liberian
Civil War (1989-1997). The arrest resulted from a 2012 complaint – which
focused heavily on Operation Octopus – made against Johnson filed in Belgium by
Liberian victims.
Included in these crimes specifically those
which occurred on October 20 and 23 during the 120-day long “Operation Octopus”
Martina Johnson was identified as one of the leaders of Operation Octopus, launched on October 15, 1992 by the National Patriotic Front of
Liberia (NPFL) headed by ex-president Charles Ghankay Taylor, “a brutal battle
for Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia, in 1992 that killed thousands and saw
extensive rapes and looting by the NPFL’s Small Boys Unit.”
According to Barbie Latza Nadeau, of The Daily Beast, “The
nuns were allegedly murdered under the sinister direction of Martina Johnson,
one of Taylor’s only female artillery chiefs and a frontline commander who
allegedly carried out many of his hits during Operation Octopus.”
Among the war crimes were the assassinations of five American
nuns which took place October 20 and 23, 1992:
Oct. 20, 1992 – “Sister Barbara Muttra and Sister Mary Joel
Kolmer were shot in their vehicles along with a Liberian colleague and two
relief workers, apparently as part of the Operation’s agenda to rid Liberia of
whites and those who worked with them.”
Oct. 23, 1992 – “fighters came to the convent where the
remaining sisters lived and first attacked Sister Kathleen McGuire when she was
summoned to unlock the gate by a killer identified as Mosquito, who shot her
first and then shot the other two before mutilating their bodies with a
machete.”
The bodies of the murdered nuns were only discovered a month
later, after the fighting had lulled.
She is only the second person to be charged for crimes
relating to the country’s two civil wars that spanned 14 years. In 2012 Charles
Taylor, at the age of 64, was convicted some of the “most heinous and brutal
crimes in human history” and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
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EXCERPT: Massacre in Margibi – Summary Execution at
Horton’s Farm, Kakata, Margibi County in October 1992: Martina Johnson, NPFL
artillery commander ordered the execution of 23 persons arrested in Bong Mines
as suspected fighters of ULIMO. Massacre at Firestone plantation, Margibi county on
December 26, 1992: Joseph Zackor, alias “Gen. Zack”, Nixon Gayor, Francis
Duanna and men assigned with them massacred 35 persons at the Firestone
Plantations, division No. 31 while escaping the ULIMO incursion in Kakata. [Josephus M. Gray, “Let Justice Prevail In the Spirit of
TRC Not Amnesty,” Front Page Africa, Oct. (?) 2015]
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SOURCES
“Belgium
arrests Liberian ex-rebel commander,” The On Line Salone Report, Sep. 19, 2014.
Barbie Latza Nadeau, “Caught: Female Assassin Who Allegedly
Murdered Five American Nuns,” The Daily Beast, Sep. 22, 2014.
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More: Hitwomen
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More: Hitwomen
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More cases, see: Female Serial Killers of Africa & the African Diaspora
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