Prelate Demands Release of Nuns’ Bodies

Monrovia’s Roman Catholic archbishop demanded on Monday that rebel leader Charles Taylor and his forces release for burial the bodies of five American nuns and four Liberian novices whose killings were reported over the weekend.

“We hold Mr. Taylor responsible, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, for the deaths of these . . . lovely people,” Archbishop Michael Francis told an audience at a memorial for the nuns in Monrovia. He publicly asked Taylor to allow the church to retrieve the nuns’ bodies for burial “no matter their state of decomposition.”

The report of the nuns’ deaths was the latest grisly news from the West African country founded by freed American slaves. Fighting in a three-year civil war there has taken as many as 60,000 lives, two-thirds of them from famine.

The United Nations said 50 more civilians have been killed and 500 wounded since Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) began its latest offensive on Oct. 15. About 200,000 refugees have fled into Monrovia since the fighting was renewed.

Taylor began the Liberian civil war at Christmastime in 1989, when he invaded from neighboring Ivory Coast with a tiny ragtag force determined to oust President Samuel K. Doe.

Doe was later captured and murdered by a second rebel group. By then, the seizure of Monrovia by a Nigerian-led, seven-nation army dispatched by the Economic Community of West African States had reduced the military situation in the country to a stalemate.

The economic community’s force later helped establish a new Liberian government under the leadership of former Vice President Amos Sawyer. But Sawyer’s attempts to fashion a functioning administration have been stymied by Taylor’s consistent refusal to participate and his threats to retake Monrovia by force.

In recent days, combat between Taylor’s forces and those of the West African community has intensified around key locations in the capital, including its harbor and downtown airport. A rebel shell that landed near the airport runway on Monday killed four civilians, an officer from the economic community’s force told Reuters.

But persistent shelling by Taylor has not yet damaged the runway itself, which is still being used by the Nigerian army to bring in troop reinforcements. The Nigerian air force in turn has been bombing Taylor’s headquarters at Gbarnga, inland from Monrovia.

The Nigerian contingent of the six-nation force has increased from 4,250 to 6,000, bringing the West African force’s garrison to 10,000 men. Taylor also claims to have 10,000 troops fighting under his leadership.

The circumstances under which the nuns and novices were killed remain cloudy.

Francis, at services on Monday, contended two were killed while trying to rescue a wounded child down the road from their convent on Oct. 20. The others, he said, were shot in front of the convent. Francis has refused to identify the source who confirmed the murders and gave the details. The convent is in Gardnersville, a Monrovia suburb long under Taylor’s control.

Whether the nuns and novices--members of the Illinois-based order of the Adorers of the Precious Blood of Christ--had been specifically targeted for death was unclear. But observers in Monrovia speculated that their deaths were more likely due to the lack of control that Taylor exerts over his troops, and their lack of discipline, rather than to any rebel policy.