A man accused of committing war crimes, while one of the leaders of a faction during the Liberian civil war, has been ordered to leave the US.
George Boley Sr. was the head of the Liberian Peace Council, which is accused of massacring dozens of villagers between 1994 and 1995 and of recruiting child soldiers.
Mr Boley, 62, lived near New York with his family and worked as a school administrator.
A trial in 2010-11 ruled that Mr Boley committed atrocities in Liberia and resided in the US without valid documents.
An immigration tribunal held on Monday that this conviction made him inadmissible to the United States.
The removal order is the first obtained by the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, which added the recruitment and use of child soldiers as grounds for deportation.
"This historic immigration judge's ruling is the culmination of extensive efforts by Homeland Security Investigations special agents and ICE attorneys to bring George Boley to justice for his crimes," ICE Director John Morton said.
However, according to the former chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Liberia, Mr Boley could be a free man once deported and not face justice for his crimes.
“I don’t have the full understanding of the legal reasons why he’s being removed, but it is my understanding that he was being held for immigration violations and that his records during the crisis in Liberia also put him in a very unfavorable condition.
"But, he’s going home to Liberia where there are others who have been accused of human rights violations in Liberia, and he's ’going to be a virtual free man in Liberia, just like the others.
“Liberia seems to be a colony that harbors perpetrators. Second to that, there is no political will to take action on the TRC report, apparently because the people in authority, the current regime, do not have the political will to take action on the TRC process.
"So, what we have is a land of impunity. So, if Boley goes home, he joins his peers,” said former chairman of the TRC, Jerome Verdier.
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