LIBERIAN STUDENTS RANSACK POLICE STATION

By VBS Staff

On the eve of the premiere of the Vice Guide to Liberia (but maybe due to unrelated circumstances), police and members of the Federation of Liberian Youth (FLY), a student outfit from the poor African nation, clashed this weekend in Monrovia. The trouble started when police arrested allegedly unaccredited members of FLY trying to force their way into the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex where the group was holding its congress. In retaliation, FLY stormed the Zone 8 police sub-station in Paynesville. Rushing from a red van, the students vandalized the office, threw stones at police, and demanded the release of their colleagues. And then some people were released.

But then when all was said and done, police claim the 30 students accidentally freed a dangerous criminal who’d been on their wanted list for over two weeks. Seventeen of the students are currently in custody including George Sieh WIlliams, president of the University of Liberia Student Union and Kwame E. Ross, president of the Liberia National Students Union. A very dire situation, making it even more obvious: Liberian police are in no way prepared to handle even the relatively smaller problems that plague this country.

Check into VBS all this week and next as we unfurl the Vice Guide to Liberia and explore how a country that was once so intimately linked with the US wound up in such sad straits.

More from Liberia:
DOODLES OF WAR – Bloodthirsty Child Soldiers Tag Liberia

LIBERIA’S ANALOGUE BLOGGER

LIBERIAN BOYS AND GIRLS – Have Better Vintage T-Shirts than You

THE HUNTER AND HIS DOGS – Liberian fiction by Saah Millimono

GENERAL BUTT NAKED VERSUS THE TUPAC ARMY – West Africa has Gone Mad and it Looks Fantastic!

LIBERIA – DEPT OF LET BYGONE BE BYGONES (Gen. Butt Naked’s capture)