‘We’re not witch-hunting’ critics

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf says her government is not witch-hunting anyone as it has “no enemies, but critics,” in response to a wave of diverse public reactions to the shocking discovery of the lifeless body of former Liberia’s Petroleum Refinery Company or LPRC Managing Director Mr. Harry Greaves on a beach behind the Foreign Ministry.

“Let me first express condolence to the wife of Mr. Greaves and to his daughters. And just let me make it clear, this government has no enemies. We have many critics; but critics are not enemies, ”President Sirleaf told reporters upon her return Monday from the just-ended African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Mr. Greaves was found dead and identified by family members on Sunday, 31 January on the beach behind the fence of the Executive Mansion, barely three days after he went missing from RLJ Kendeja Hotel outside Monrovia.

Mrs. Sirleaf further told reporters she has ordered a full investigation, adding an independent source is required “ because we all want to get to the bottom of it.” She said she has mandated Liberia’s Justice Minister Cllr. Benedict Sannoh to get independent investigators either from the United Kingdom or the United States to conduct a thorough investigation into Mr. Greaves’ death.

“I’ve asked the Minister of Justice to try to get either the US or the UK to get us a team that will really come and do a thorough investigation so we all can know,” she said. As the nation ponder over the cause of his death, inside family sources have confided in the NewDawn newspaper that prior to the unfortunate discovery of his lifeless body behind the fence walls of the Executive Mansion ground, Mr. Greaves and his wife were contemplating a divorce, which was allegedly agreed to have taken effect at the end of February, this month.

According to the sources, Mr. Greaves had already left the family house to stay elsewhere before he met his untimely demise after he and his driver drove at the RLJ Hotel in Kendija on Friday, 29 January.

The sources are claiming that Mr. Greaves and his wife had both agreed to quit the union with settlement due at the end of February. However the deceased was also alleged to have confided in friends that business was not favorable, suggesting that he was a depressed man.

Though circumstances leading to his demise and how he surfaced on shore at the beach are yet to be determined, the former LPRC boss’ death comes just about a week after a Nigerian banker who was heading the Guaranty Trust Bank here Mr. Don Orogun fell from a boat on which he and his family and a Liberian friend Atty. George Kalondo were riding and drowned.

With a presidential mandate given Justice Minister Sannoh to source foreign independent investigators, Mrs. Sirleaf asked Liberians to wait and “let’s get the best investigators totally independent of the government or the country.”

She suggests that the independent investigators will be able the establish the main cause of death rather than people speculating now. Following ten years of President Sirleaf’s rule, Liberia is yet to boast of a single pathologist to save her regime of the high cost of sourcing foreign experts to investigate these kinds of controversial situations.

Commenting on the just-ended AU Summit, President Sirleaf said she had to make a final report there on behalf of ten Heads of State Committee that she chairs. “In the case of Liberia I was head of the High Level Committee in the post 2015 Global Agenda. I had to make a final report on behalf of the ten Heads of State Committee that I chair. And that was done, so it was a good, successful meeting,” President Sirleaf said.

According to her, everybody received the report with a lot of expression of appreciation for the work done by her committee, adding that the committee made sure that Africa’s aspiration and expectations in the Common African Position were fully integrated to the Global Agenda.

Also touching on Burundi’s crisis, she said the African leaders decided that they will not send peacekeepers into any place where they are not welcomed.

By Winston W. Parley-Edited by Othello B. Garblah