Already early in his administration,
President Tolbert applied the Biblical adage ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth’. In 1971 he signed the first death warrant for the execution of a
convicted murderer, Justin Obi who had killed Episcopalian Bishop George Brown.
Not much later, he signed the death warrants of three other convicted criminals
among whom one of his cousins, William Tolbert. In 1974 he again signed three
death warrants authorizing the hanging of the convicted criminals. In 1976 he
ordered the public flogging of petty thieves in the Mary Antoinette Tubman
football stadium, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, an event, which was
witnessed by thousands of people. In a big contrast with the public and painful
punishment of these petty criminals, he granted clemency in the same period to a
former Police Director – and member of the Tolbert clan - who one year earlier
had been convicted and sent to prison for seven years because of his
participation in a counterfeit money gang. Was Tolbert favouring
those who were
close to him or was he skilfully manoeuvring between opposing forces within the
Americo-Liberian community by reinforcing his own political base? With hindsight
it has become clear that there was a fierce struggle for power within the
families that determined the country's destiny.
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