Liberians who survived a civil war say a man now living in South Jersey committed atrocities including murder

Chris Palmer, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Jan 23, 2025

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One man accused Laye Sekou Camara — whose nom de guerre was K-1 — of shooting his aunt in the head.

Another said that as he begged Camara for mercy, the Liberian rebel general pulled out a gun, pistol-whipped him, then killed his brother.

And a third man said that as he was being held prisoner, he watched Camara shoot a group of people who had been lined up beside a creek. He could not recall how many victims had been killed.

"There were many," he said.

Over the course of several hours Thursday, those men and several others testified during an unusual hearing at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia. They had been flown in from Liberia to testify at Camara's trial on immigration fraud charges, a proceeding that was canceled when he decided to plead guilty to those counts last week. The crimes he admitted as part of that plea did not include the atrocities his accusers described on the witness stand Thursday.

Instead, Camara, 46, who now lives in Atlantic County, New Jersey, acknowledged only that he had lied on immigration forms more than a decade ago when he sought to enter the United States after a second civil war in Liberia, a conflict that roiled the West African nation in 2003 and left more than 200,000 people dead.

By pleading guilty to charges including possession of a fraudulently obtained immigration document, Camara admitted that he provided false answers to questions including whether he had ever belonged to a rebel group or had recruited child soldiers — things he now acknowledges he did during the war.

He did not, however, admit that he committed war crimes. And he continues to deny such allegations, his attorneys said.

But as federal prosecutors seek to convince U.S. District Judge Chad F. Kenney that Camara deserves a significant prison sentence for his offenses, they called witnesses who they said could offer details about the scale of Camara's misrepresentations. And that is how he came to face his accusers inside the courtroom Thursday.

In testimony that was delivered in a generally dispassionate manner, eight Liberian men, now mostly in their 40s, recalled decades-old horrors they attributed to Camara, whom they referred to as K-1 or called Dragon Master, another nickname from the war. (The Philadelphia Inquirer is not identifying the witnesses out of concern that they could face retribution in Liberia.)

The events often centered on the Freeport of Monrovia, a key port in Liberia's capital city that witnesses said Camara and his rebel group — Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD — sought to control.

The port is where many starving residents would go to seek food in the war-torn city. If Camara saw residents leaving with items, witnesses said, he often accused people of looting.

One man testified that as he tried to leave the port with some rice, Camara lashed him 25 times in the back, then stabbed him in the knee. He still has a scar.

The man said he saw Camara shoot a fellow LURD member who had been accused of stealing headphones. Camara then told the crowd to leave the victim's body on display for three days, the witness said, an affront to his Muslim faith, which calls for a quick burial.

And another man said he saw Camara arrive at the port with a group of bodyguards, accuse people who had been searching for food of looting, then start firing at the crowd, killing many. Afterward, the man said, Camara told his troops to load the bodies into a shipping container.

"There were a lot of dead bodies," the man said.

Camara did not speak during the hearing, but while leaving the courtroom for a break, he shook his head and sighed about the "lies" he said were being told on the stand.

One of Camara's attorneys, Ellis Palividas, said after the hearing that Camara denies having committed the atrocities he was accused of Thursday, and that he would present evidence at a future hearing to shed a more complete light on Camara's role in a "very difficult conflict."

Palividas said that Camara "did his best" in circumstances in Liberia that bordered on anarchy and that he, too, had suffered from the country's long-standing instability. Camara's father was beheaded at age 12, the lawyer said, and Camara was then recruited to serve as a child soldier in a conflict that predated the 2003 war.

Prosecutors led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Linwood C. Wright have not said what sentence they will seek for Camara, who remains free on bail and is scheduled to have his penalty imposed in May. He faces a maximum sentence of 40 years.

Several other figures from the Liberian conflict have been prosecuted for similar immigration offenses in Philadelphia in recent years. The only one to be sentenced so far — Mohammed "Jungle Jabbah" Jabateh of East Lansdowne — is serving a term of three decades behind bars.