African warlords hid in plain sight in America: ‘That’s where they go’

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The United States provided a safe harbor for decades for warlords who tortured, raped and cannibalized their countrymen in West Africa before settling in America alongside their victims’ relatives.

After ransacking Liberia in civil wars that killed about 250,000 people in the 1990s and 2000s, the war criminals sought shelter in the U.S. and lived among refugees. The warlords took advantage of Americans’ generosity and the federal government’s immigration policies and procedures to pursue the American dream without, in many cases, even concealing their identities.

In various cases, the warlords’ histories were known to the people in their communities, the U.S. government and anyone else who bothered to pay attention. In some instances, the federal government sought not to imprison or deport known warlords for many years, if at all.

Liberia’s new government wants justice and is establishing a War and Economic Crimes Court. In an exclusive interview, President Joseph Boakai told The Washington Times that there “will be no witch-hunting,” but the court will enable his country to “put the whole thing behind us and make a move towards building our country.”

Mr. Boakai praised the U.S. for taking in Liberian refugees during decades of unrest, but victims worry whether the U.S. will continue to serve as a comfortable hideout for remorseless killers.

Tracking ‘Jungle Jabbah’

Mohammed Jabateh is a prime example of a notorious criminal living undisturbed in the U.S.

Jabateh, also known as “Jungle Jabbah,” was charged in 2016 with immigration fraud and perjury, but U.S. prosecutors proved the former warlord’s guilt with detailed accounts of his involvement in rape, torture, murder and cannibalism while leading a notorious “liberation movement” in his native Liberia.

After seeking asylum in America in 1998, he had no trouble gaining a foothold in Philadelphia’s Little Africa district by building and operating a car business in his name. Public records show that no federal immigration enforcement officer looked closely at Jabateh’s residency until 2011.

Jabateh wanted to stay permanently and submitted a card that identified him as a “general” of one of the warring factions in the Liberian civil war of the 1990s, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agent testified at his October 2017 trial.

Norman deMoose, the USCIS agent, told the court that the identification card and Jabateh’s answers to questions, including about terrorist activity, alarmed him. Mr. deMoose raised concerns internally, but Jabateh was not arrested until April 2016.

U.S. immigration enforcement officials were slow to recognize the problem and appeared surprised to learn of his crimes. In a 2018 interview, a prosecutor who helped obtain a 50-year prison sentence in The Hague against former Liberian President Charles Taylor did not find Jabateh’s presence in Philadelphia shocking.

“I wasn’t surprised when he ended up here,” said David Crane, former founding chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone and former Defense Intelligence Agency assistant general counsel. “He was a bad dude in the ’90s.”

Asked why a Liberian warlord would turn to the U.S. for safe harbor, Mr. Crane answered, “That’s where they go.”

The warlords who hid in America were not petty criminals. The Western world is familiar with the crimes of Nazi fugitives who scattered to Argentina after World War II, but many Americans don’t know the details of the war criminals who lived in their neighborhoods.

A Liberian woman testified in a Pennsylvania courtroom in 2017 about the killing and cannibalism Jabateh oversaw. Her name is withheld here at the request of the court. The woman, a witness for the prosecution, said Jabateh arrived in her town with soldiers of his United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy and took her and her husband, both farmers, captive in their home.

She testified that the soldiers killed her husband, cut out his heart and gave it to her to cook. Jungle Jabbah, she said, wanted her husband’s heart and thought eating it could “make yourself strong.” Soldiers stripped the woman naked with plans to rape her after she cooked his heart. She said she fled into bushes after they began their meal.

The woman became agitated while testifying during the trial and begged for forgiveness from no one in particular.

“I’m so sorry for it, I’m so sorry,” she shrieked. “My heart hurts.”

Jabateh sat still and looked directly at the woman while she screamed and sobbed.

A jury convicted Jabateh in October 2017 after listening to prosecutors and several other witnesses detail his role in a variety of crimes, including terrorism and torture. In 2018, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but he has continued to push for his early release.

Walking the streets

The conviction came as no shock. Perhaps more astonishing is the revelation that his true identity was no surprise to many people in America either.

Jackson Towah, a Liberian expatriate who has helped the U.S. government investigate other war criminals hiding in America, recalled that he first saw Jabateh on Woodland Avenue in Philadelphia.

“I just shook my head. … I said, ‘If this man [is] here, who else?’” Mr. Towah said.

Mr. Towah soon learned that Tom Woewiyu, a Liberian defense minister under Taylor, also lived in the area.

The U.S. government indicted Woewiyu on charges of immigration fraud in 2014, saying that forces under Woewiyu’s command had waged a “heinous and brutal military campaign.” After his 2018 trial, Woewiyu was found guilty on 11 counts of false and fraudulent information he gave the government while seeking citizenship.

Woewiyu and Jabateh don’t appear to have tried to conceal their identities from American law enforcement officials or their fellow Liberians.

The U.S. government listed Woewiyu as a proposed U.S.-based witness, alongside Mr. Towah, for its case against another Liberian warlord, George Boley, who was deported from the U.S. in 2012.

Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Mark Gilland, who investigated Jabateh, said the department reacted swiftly upon receiving fuller information.

“We had to find out about him, and once we did in 2013, we immediately acted on the information,” Mr. Gilland said after Jabateh’s 2017 jury trial, steps from the courthouse doors. “But as you saw, the system is largely based on the honesty of the applicant, and if we are unaware of what they may have done, then it’s impossible to take any action.”

Murky numbers

Details on how many former fighters and suspected Liberian war criminals live freely in the U.S. or visit regularly are difficult to come by, and Liberians are reluctant to speak out for fear of retribution.

Alieu Jabateh, the warlord’s brother and business partner, declined to answer questions in 2016 about the duo’s Philadelphia shipping business, Jabateh Bros. At that time, others in the brothers’ community insisted that Mohammed Jabateh was innocent, a commander of disciplined fighters during a violent time for their former homeland. Detractors, they said, were simply jealous.

Voffee Jabateh, Mohammed Jabateh’s cousin and head of the influential African Cultural Alliance of North America, said in 2018 that he helped Mohammed Jabateh build his business.

The federal agency that first grew suspicious of Mohammed Jabateh’s history was in Voffee Jabateh’s offices mere hours after Mohammed was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but the federal officials were not on hand to talk about Mohammed Jabateh or present any change in their procedures that Mohammed Jabateh exploited.

USCIS officers had citizenship applications stacked on a table, shared instructions about how to apply for naturalization online and related tips for preparing for an immigration interview.

A female USCIS officer told the Liberians that criminality was not disqualifying but lying about crime could squander eligibility.

Voffee Jabateh, who served on Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney’s transition team in 2015, raised questions about whether the American legal system was cherry-picking which Liberian war criminals to pursue.

“If he [rapes] people, I can’t defend him; if he [kills] innocent people, I can’t defend him. [But] if he’s being targeted because of his ethnicity and then we got all of these other folks that are still walking around and then pointing at using Mohammed as one scapegoat — that’s where I have my problem,” he said in 2018 from an office with citations from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Philadelphia City Council featured prominently on a nearby shelf.

Nearly six years later, Liberians view the Boakai government’s efforts to prosecute war criminals with suspicion.

Bernard Goah, a Liberian expatriate in America who has worked with Mr. Towah to hunt down war criminals, said he has concerns that former fighters have positioned themselves to influence the new government’s war crimes court.

“This is our last shot,” Mr. Goah said.

In a May interview, Mr. Boakai said he understands the stakes of the task ahead for his nation’s war crimes court.

“It is going to be an investigation that will lead to not just being able to prosecute people who bear the most responsibility, but it [will] also be able to ease the minds of those who have been traumatized by this war, people who thought that there would never be justice,” the president said.

Mr. Boakai said he is simultaneously working to create favorable economic conditions so Liberians can return from abroad to “a country that doesn’t promise them all of what they hope to have, but all of us can understand that there’ll be peace.”

• The Fund for American Studies’ Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship provided support for this report.