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A former Liberian warlord known as “Jungle Jabbah has been sentenced to 30 years in prison on by a US court for lying to gain asylum because of his role in the civil war in his country.
Mohammed Jabbateh, 51, who has lived in East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, since the late 1990s, was found guilty on two counts of fraud in immigration documents and two counts of perjury.
Prosecutors say During the height of Liberia’s first civil war from 1992 to 1995, Jabbateh, while serving as commander of a warring group, either personally committed or ordered acts such as rapes, ritual cannibalism, mutilation, murder and the use of child soldiers.
While applying for asylum in December 1998, and then for permanent legal residency later on, Jabbateh was not truthful about his membership in the group known as the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), and later ULIMO-K, rebel groups that battled for control of Liberia, prosecutors said.
Two dozen witnesses, including 17 Liberian victims, testified in the trial. In one of such testimonies described as barbaric, Jabbateh ordered that the heart of a captive be cooked and fed to his fighters. In another, fighters under his command murdered a villager, removed his heart and ordered the town chief’s wife to cook it. Jabbateh later had the town chief himself murdered and ordered his widow to cook her husband’s heart.
The case was investigated by special agents of Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Courtest: Reuters News
