One of Liberia’s notorious civil war actors has been sentenced to a five-year prison term after he tried to hide his role as a rebel leader. Laye Sekou Camara, 47, off Mays Landing did not disclose his violent past in a Liberian civil war when he came to the United States on an immigrant visa in 2010, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia.
He was arrested in March 2022 for making false statements on his green card application for permanent residency.
At a court hearing earlier this year, nine Liberian witnesses said Camara killed and mutilated civilians as a military leader for Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, also known as LURD.
“The defendant was a notorious LURD commander, brutal even by the standards of the Second Liberian Civil War, and he lied about his past to build a new life in the United States,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in Philadelphia.
One witness said Camara, also known as General Dragon Master and General K-1, fatally shot a mother and her 13-year-old son after the woman objected to the recruitment of her child, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“Other witnesses described how LURD rebels — and Camara specifically — fired on and killed civilians who were trying to obtain food,” the statement said. It alleged Camara directed a mortar attack on Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, killing a Liberian guard at the U.S. embassy.
“In one instance, a witness described how Camara tied a man’s hands behind his back and ‘cut off his right ear,’ when the man continued to resist,” the statement said.
The crimes occurred during internal fighting in Liberia from 1999 to 2003, a conflict called the Second Liberian Civil War.
Liberia was established in 1847 as Africa’s first republic by settlers from a community of freed slaves sent from the United States.
The country, which also experienced a civil war from 1989 to 1997, has 28 ethnic groups and languages, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.
Camara pleaded guilty in January of this year to three counts of using a fraudulently obtained green card and one count of possessing a fraudulently obtained green card.
U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney sentenced him Sept. 11 in Philadelphia federal court.
– Jim Walsh /Courier-Post
