A 45-year-old man suspected of war crimes during the civil war in Liberia was arrested Thursday in London and released Friday August 28 while remaining under investigation, said British police. The man, whose identity has not been disclosed, is suspected of crimes committed during " the first and second Liberian civil wars, between 1989 and 2003, " police said.
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According to the Liberian newspaper FrontPage Africa, it is Jankuba Fofana, a commander of the rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), who was opposed to President Charles Taylor. A search was carried out in the south-east of the capital, where the arrest took place Thursday morning, police said. The civil war in Liberia, one of the most atrocious conflicts on the African continent, left some 250,000 dead between 1989 and 2003. It was marked by massacres committed by often drugged combatants, mutilations, rapes used as weapons. war, acts of cannibalism and the forced recruitment of child soldiers.
Charles Taylor, who presided over Liberia from 1997 to 2003, was the first ex-head of state convicted by international justice since the trials of Nazi officials in Nuremberg after World War II. He was sentenced in 2012 by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to 50 years in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the civil war in this neighboring country of Liberia. He is serving his sentence in a British prison.