GBARNGA, Bong – Liberia’s justice minister and attorney general, Frederick Doe Cherue, says Liberia has long been in charge of maintaining its own peace and security, even before the final drawdown of UNMIL.

Speaking to reporters in Gbarnga last week, Cherue said the maintenance of security in the country for the past three years had been carried out by state security.

“Security has been in place since then. Liberia has taken over security responsibilities for the past three years now,” he said. “UNMIL was just here to provide the military aspect of it, to provide continual education.”

Cherue’s statements came following a one-day assessment visit to the Gbarnga Regional Hub and the Gbarnga Central Prison, along with Chief Justice Francis Korkpor.

“We came to see the conditions of the hub and the employees here – the police officers, the immigration officers, and the prisoners at the prison compound,” he said.

“Some of the conditions are now deteriorating. Some places, it’s the problem of water, but those conditions are manageable… the managers there are doing their best to cope up with the situation. We are going back to Monrovia so that we can readjust and see where we can help them address the situations.”

The justice minister said he considered the hub to be a success.

“I think when new things come into place, there are challenges. But [from what I saw], there is a success in this new hub thing,” he said.

However, Cherue expressed surprise at the relatively overcrowded Gbarnga Central prison: “There are lots of our young people in this prison. I was disturbed to see lots of our young people in there. Why [are] they there? We don’t know. But we only pray that we will be able to give them the kind of training and education that will prevent many young people from going to prison.”

Cherue noted the high number of pretrial detainees at prisons across the country was also an issue in Gbarnga.

Due to overcrowded prisons, Solicitor General Betty M. Lamin-Blamo had issued a directive in June this year directing all county attorneys, prosecutors, district attorneys and city solicitors to avoid issuing writs of arrest for minor criminal offenses.

Lamin-Blamo had advised prosecutors to only issue writs of arrest in cases of capital offenses such as murder or rape, offenses relating to national security threats, human trafficking, and arson.

Cherue said magistrates at the Monrovia Central Prison had been conducting trials for inmates at the prison, suggesting that process would soon begin in Gbarnga.

“Some day you will see magistrates are going there to sit and immediately try the prisoners right in the place there,” he said. “This will help to minimize this whole long procedure of going to court and taking the people from one place to another.”

He said he would further study the situation in order to put programs in place to further minimize the number of pre-trial detainees.

Cherue was appointed as justice minister by the President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf following the resignation of former Justice Minister Benedict Sannoh in April this year. Before his appointment, Cherue served as senator for River Gee from 2006 to 2015.

Featured photo courtesy of Erik Hersman