Pardoned Politician Returns From Exile

Liberia’s foremost opposition leader has returned home, becoming the first of many exiled politicians pardoned by President Charles Taylor for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government.

But Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who arrived in Monrovia, the capital, aboard a commercial flight from Ivory Coast late Friday, told reporters that she was not back to stay, although she would be back again, “now that the door is opened.”

“It’s been a long time. I just want to meet families, meet friends, meet partisans and meet the country,” Johnson-Sirleaf said.

Johnson-Sirleaf came in second to Taylor in a 1997 presidential race held in the wake of a brutal 1989-96 civil war that devastated the West African nation.