The World - News from Nov. 17, 1988

Two Americans jailed by Liberia for four months for their alleged role in a coup attempt last July were freed after President Samuel K. Doe ordered the charges dropped. Former Army Sgt. James Henry Bush, 40, a Vietnam War veteran from Raleigh, N.C., and William Elmer Curtis, 45, of Jersey City, N.J., said they plan to return to the United States today. A grand jury in September indicted the two on charges of illegally entering Liberia with the intent of overthrowing the government and killing Doe, both offenses punishable by death. Doe said that he ordered the charges dropped as a “manifestation of good will to the U.S. President-elect George Bush.”