Welcome to the Butt Naked World That Is Rest#q=enjoy Dying Over and Over Again

Face to face with General Butt Naked - 'the nearly evil homo in the world'

Information technology is 1982 and equally twenty-four hours breaks in Liberia, the Krahn tribe prepares for the initiation of its loftier priest.

Against the audio of the drumbeat, he is taken to an isolated area, led by a human being in a carved black mask.

The priest stands before an altar, naked.

War and peace: Former African warlord Pator Joshua Milton Blahyi chats to Edna Fernandes

The elders bring a fiddling girl, unclothe her and smear her body with clay. The priest slays the child.

In a ritual that spans iii days, her center and other torso parts are removed and eaten.

In the form of those days the priest has a vision: he meets the devil who tells him he will become a great warrior.

The devil says to increase his power he must proceed the rituals of child sacrifice and cannibalism.

The initiation is complete and the priest is now one of the nearly powerful leaders in Westward Africa. The priest is 11 years former.

As prophesied, the male child priest grew up to get one of Liberia's almost notorious warlords: General Butt Naked.

He and his boy soldiers would charge into battle naked apart from boots and machine guns.

The initiation cede that he carried out aged 11 was the first life he took out of the 20,000 deaths for which he now claims responsibility.

His rivals dispute the number of deaths every bit incommunicable to evidence.

Yet what is indisputable is that during Liberia's fourteen years of civil state of war, the man became known as one of the almost inhumane and ruthless guerrilla leaders in Africa's history.

After the former Full general Butt Naked confessed his past to Liberia'southward Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008, one internet blogger asked: 'Is this the most evil homo who always lived?'

His crimes included child sacrifice, cannibalism, the exploitation of child soldiers and trading blood diamonds for guns and cocaine, which he fed to male child soldiers equally young as nine.

Yet today he says he is a reformed man. In July 1996, the warlord had 'an epiphany'.

Having spent 14 years holding nightly conversations with the devil, he had a blinding vision of Christ who told him to end the killings and catechumen.

This was a Damascene conversion like no other: the former tribal priest and warlord is at present known as Pastor Joshua Milton Blahyi.

Aged 39, he is married, a father of three and lives as a Christian preacher.

General Butt Naked: Joshua Milton Blahyi threatens a fellow fighter with a knife in May 1996

He says if he can change, anyone can. He too calls for the tribal religious practice of child cede and cannibalism to end, proverb it still goes on in Republic of liberia to this day.

Liberia's TRC, set upward to investigate the war's atrocities, reported in 2009 and called for a pardon for Blahyi on the grounds of his candour and remorse.

Now in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Blahyi says he is willing to become the International Criminal Courtroom at The Hague and be tried for state of war crimes.

He lifts the chapeau on Liberia'due south underground societies that conduct child sacrifice and cannibalism, too every bit his role in the state of war  -  and his desire to change.

His interview paints a terrifying portrait of ane man's descent into Hell and his quest for redemption.

Information technology is a confession that will leave many asking whether such crimes can always be forgiven. It is a question he asks himself.

Forth with Ethiopia, Liberia is the only African country without roots in European colonisation. It was founded and colonised by freed American slaves in the early on 1820s.

However its recent history has been blighted past civil war.

Betwixt 1989 and 2003, Liberia'southward inter-tribal war killed 250,000 people, displaced i million and led to one in five children becoming soldiers.

During the class of the conflict, this corner of West Africa became a nexus for the trade in claret diamonds and cocaine, gunrunning and laundering the funds of terrorist groups such every bit Al Qaeda.

The instability emanating from this one country posed a danger far beyond Republic of liberia'south border, as far as our shores.

General Barrel Naked was one of the leading warlords, fighting guerilla groups including that of Charles Taylor, who later become president of Liberia and is at present being tried for state of war crimes at The Hague.

I meet Blahyi for the start time in the dusty courtyard of Hotel Zeos, 45 minutes' drive from Monrovia, Liberia's capital.

He has chosen this deserted spot because, afterwards his confession to the TRC, he became the subject of assassination attempts.

He strides towards me, arms spread, smiling widely. 'Welcome to Republic of liberia.'

It had taken months to find Blahyi because he went clandestine afterward the last assassination attempt.

In the end, I obtained his number from a Liberian film manager living in New York.

Lost youth: Kid soldiers on the streets of Monrovia in 1996

I remember calling his mobile for the offset time.

The voice that answered was initially wary. But once satisfied of my identity, he became warm, even friendly and would ring my mobile in London at random times for a conversation.

Interest in the General has renewed since his bear witness to the TRC and, of course, his dramatic conversion to evangelical Christianity.

He is the field of study of an American documentary at the Sundance Festival next year.

The filmmakers' interest was the same equally mine: could a human who claimed to have done such evil truly modify or is he merely a bright trickster?

Over the days spent with him in Liberia, I get to know a man who is many things: genuinely lamentable; tortured by the knowledge of his actions; frighteningly honest almost his atrocities; and at other times vulnerable and desperate to please. Lucid, compelling, charismatic.

But a damaged man, yet.

The first thing you notice about the General is his majority.

He left armed combat more than than a decade ago, still his physical presence remains intimidating.

The second thing is his optics  -  everything he has done is held therein.

We have a seat in the gloomy bar. Confronting the fizz of traffic we talk, him sipping a bottle of malt drinkable.

His shoulders and arm muscles strain against his khaki T-shirt.

When agitated by a detail subject, he gesticulates wildly, his face reliving every moment.

At one such moment, he knocks his canteen off the table.

Without taking his eyes off me, he catches it a separate 2d before it smashes to the basis. The soldier's reflexes remain as sharp as ever.

I ask him how his life was as a child.

He describes how he was told first by his begetter, then by his tribal elders that he was born to exist a warrior.

On the orders of the elders, he was conceived and taken from his mother minutes after birth.

Aged seven, his father handed him to the elders who tutored him in the rituals of the priesthood.

When he was initiated, he became a powerful effigy as every tribesman at present bowed to him.

In 1982, as the high priest, aged 11, Blahyi remembers performing black magic rituals at the presidential palace to protect the then Liberian leader, Samuel Doe, from enemies.

Doe had been a member of the Krahn tribe and came to power in a trigger-happy insurrection in 1980.

In 1990, Doe was seized in the presidential palace and murdered by the troops of a rebel leader  -  an deed that led to an escalation in the conflict which raged for some other 13 years.

War crimes: Blahyi (pictured as a young soldier) says he is willing to go to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to exist tried

During the whole fourth dimension, Blahyi was a high priest. 1 of his most important jobs was the performance of cede rituals and cannibalism.

In Liberia today, 75 per cent of people are Christian, 20 per cent are Muslim and the rest follow the tribal religion that performs these sacrifice rituals.

But during the war, experts claim many more than practised the tribal faith.

In his book The Mask Of Anarchy, Professor Stephen Ellis of Free University, Amsterdam, wrote of the rituals practised by various tribes in Liberia and used during the war.

'Of the countless atrocities carried out by various factions, perchance the near appalling was the eating of human flesh. This was a practice with a long history . . . afterward 1991 information technology became common to encounter traumatised refugees who witnessed such events.'

Past 1994 the Catholic Church building was and then disturbed by such reports it officially condemned the practice. But Blayhi maintains it nonetheless goes on in hugger-mugger in the villages.

Equally a priest, he says, he would accept a vision almost a called child. He would tell the elders the kid'due south village, the family name, and certain secrets of that kid known but to the family.

The elders would so pb a procession to the child's house, known as 'the Firm of Accolade'.

The child would oftentimes remain oblivious until the moment came where he was taken away from the village to the altar, where he would exist stripped and covered in a type of mud.

'As priest, I said the invocation. The child is killed. His body has different, dissimilar parts taken off.'

Were you alone during this time? 'I was the only ane with the body.'

Does this nonetheless happen in Liberia? 'It still happens. If y'all went to my village now and spoke of this, they'd kill you. Since my conversion, I know witchcraft is incorrect. I know "eating" is incorrect. I must speak out now.'

During his days as a tribal priest, Blahyi says, the rituals were for the good of the tribe.

Merely once he became leader of the Butt Naked Brigade, Blahyi would sacrifice a kid before every battle.

In this example, there was no religious significance for the tribe.

Blayhi has an appallingly clear recollection of how he sacrificed children before battle  -  and the cannibalism involved.

The belief was that by killing and eating children, the soldiers would be strengthened and purified for the battle.

The worst aspect of all was many of the Butt Naked Brigade were children themselves.

It was non the only guerrilla grouping to utilise child soldiers. Aid workers estimated that every bit many as twenty,000 child soldiers were recruited by rebel and government forces during the final war.

The Butt Naked Brigade had a sideline in drug, weapons and diamond dealing. The Liberian declension was used as a drop-off betoken by Mexican drug cartels. The General's men would do a merchandise.

'I was not giving cocaine for arms, I was giving gold and diamonds for arms and cocaine,' he explains.

What did you do with the cocaine? 'Gave it to the boys. Mashed it into their food.'

From the age of ix? 'Yeah.'

His vocalisation drops as he bends his head into his chest.

The diamonds came from territory captured by the Krahn tribe factions.

The guerrilla groups would apply captured civilians to mine the diamonds and then utilise the gems to finance their war, merely as was depicted in the 2006 Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond, fix in Sierra Leone.

It was the diamond-funded drugs  -  sold to finance conflicts and backing warlords and diamond companies across the world  -  that helped push many of the younger rebel soldiers across the boundaries of humanity.

The naked wearing apparel code proved to exist a terrifyingly effective armed services tactic.

'The fear principle was behind information technology. The first thing y'all want to impose on the enemy is that you're an animal, not a guerrilla.'

For years Blayhi was priest and warrior for his tribe. He coerced his brigade of lxxx boys to kill without compassion.

Although his figure of 20,000 deaths has been accepted by Liberia's TRC, others accuse him of wild exaggeration, proverb the full is impossible to verify.

'How can he know?' Liberia's Data Minister, Norris Tweah, asks me. 'Two hundred and l thousand people were killed in the fourteen-year state of war. He is using this to make himself sound similar a slap-up warlord.'

Simply sitting with Blayhi and listening to him depict his personal depravity in forensic detail, it seems articulate that he, at least, believes every give-and-take.

Yet the turning bespeak came. It was the summer of 1996 and his clansmen were caught up in a ferocious boxing.

Information technology was decided that a sacrifice was needed. Every bit the rockets rained down, a female parent brought her three-twelvemonth-old daughter to him.

Something about the kid struck the pitiless General and for the commencement time in his life he hesitated.

Equally he relives the moment with me, his confront becomes contorted.

'The child was very unusually cute and kind. Most of the children are brought to me by the elders, they're crying, they're fighting. This child was peaceful,' he recalls. 'I thought, "This child must not die." I struggled.

'Of all of the thousands that I killed, I wish I did not kill that lilliputian girl . . . ' his voice trails off.

He is close to tears for the first and merely time. 'Right later killing her, I had my epiphany.'

He claims he saw a white light in the shape of a human being. A voice told him, 'repent and live or refuse and dice'. He believes it was Christ.

The impact was immediate. From that mean solar day the killing, the sacrifices and cannibalism ended and Blahyi entered a period of turmoil that led his men to believe he had gone mad.

Within months he had left the Butt Naked Brigade and by the cease of September 1996 he was baptised in the sea near Monrovia.

By now the lord's day has set. Blayhi looks wasted from describing the encounter with the petty girl and its impact. The confession has left him consumed past guilt.

The adjacent day he is due to preach to a congregation at a church building xv minutes abroad. We arrange to accept him at that place.

As we leave, the hotel manager checks that Blahyi is going for good.

In the optics of others Blahyi is not just a pastor: he is still seen as the murderous General and cannibal.

His reputation and name notwithstanding strikes terror into Liberian hearts.

We cannot talk in public places, nosotros cannot sit in busy hotels, we cannot be seen eating together.

As nosotros bulldoze to the church, Blahyi sits in the front. I sit behind, watching him.

He's wearing a red suit and black shirt and his shoulders loom either side of the seat. He is singing hymns.

'Did you slumber well?' he asks. 'Yep,' I lie. 'You?' 'Very well.' 'You seemed upset at the terminate of our interview,'

'I was. Just I always sleep well. No thing what.'

He jumps out of the motorcar and greets the local pastor, who is wearing white winkle-picker shoes.

His battered onetime, red Mercedes with a numberplate reading 'Be Holy' is parked outside.

A band is playing and the 300-potent congregation is clapping, singing and dancing.

The church building is at the site of a former Liberian army barracks and Blahyi has been invited to address the 'deliverance service'.

Equally the drums and synthesiser grow louder, the crowd chant 'Jesus, Jesus' equally if at a rock concert.

When Blayhi takes the microphone, the identify erupts. He is electrifying and sinister at the aforementioned time.

His sermon ranges from the dangers of fast food to the devil'due south ways and to the inappropriate apparel sense of singer Beyonce.

An hour later, sweating in his ruddy suit, he leaves the edifice to sit alone in the shade, praying.

Preaching is now his mission and role of that is saving onetime child soldiers.

Later in the week, Blayhi takes us to a rehabilitation eye he runs for ex-combatants in the bush outside Monrovia.

The lensman and I realise Blahyi is our only guarantor of safety.

Equally we turn upwardly it is clear all is non well. There is a divide in the military camp as half the boys complain of getting too picayune to eat  -  i loving cup of rice a mean solar day.

They live in two or three brick rooms with no running water or electricity. Blahyi remains the adored father effigy. But the reunion turns sour.

Nana Gbolor is the most angry. He is 26 and had been a soldier since xviii.

'When the war ended, I moved to a ghetto called Solale. I slept in a cemetery among the bodies. And then ane day the pastor came for me, he wore a T-shirt that said "God Bless Liberia". He didn't surrender on me. At present all is want is more than than i cup of rice a mean solar day and to learn construction.'

Unless boys like this are saved, many fright the past could return.

Liberia is a state with fourscore per cent unemployment.

Eighty-five per cent of its 3.9 meg population live on less than 78p per day, according to Un figures. Inter-tribal warfare brought Liberia to its knees.

The TRC report on Blahyi is just one part of the clean-upwards.

It also chosen for 49 individuals to exist banned from political role for 30 years, including the electric current president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former Earth Banking concern economist who has been dubbed Africa'southward Iron Lady.

The TRC states she was a erstwhile supporter of Charles Taylor.

But she has been widely credited with helping plow effectually the troubled nation  -  by securing the cancellation of £iii.7 billion of debt to the World Banking company.

Her government looks in no hurry to implement the TRC's demands on prosecutions.

Could victims really become back to living alongside their persecutors? I ask Data Minister Norris Tweah.

'Everyone'due south a victim hither,' he says. 'Everybody lost somebody. In a country where everyone was complicit, everyone has blood on their hands, where does the blame cease?'

Blahyi is in no doubt that saying sorry is not enough. Talking to him within the shade of an empty church, he says he feels forgiven past God. But forgiveness on Earth is some other matter.

'I believe the Bible strongly and it says God has forgiven me.'

Would you be willing to be tried for war crimes at The Hague?

'Aye. I would say I am guilty and if the law says I should be jailed for war crimes, and so jail me. If the law says I should be hanged, then hang me.'

Blayhi tells me he withal struggles to cope with the enormity of his savagery. At times information technology threatens to break him.

Did you think of suicide?

'Many times.'

Earlier we get out him, he goes to a second - hand shoe store and spends £6 on trainers for his boys and his children.

Carrying them in a black binliner, he says his goodbyes and for that moment he seems alone.

He heads for the bus that will take him habitation.

Home is not where his family is; they alive in hiding in Ghana. His greatest fright at present is not death, but losing his own children  -  an irony not lost on him.

For me, our week together has been like existence with a split personality.

Describing his past life is a painful and violent catharsis, leaving him and those around him drained and traumatised.

So there's the other side: the reformed pastor dispensing a bag of doughnuts to local schoolchildren, telling the story of Jesus and the loaves and fishes with great warmth and sense of humour.

We all get caught up in the laughter, until I suddenly find myself recoiling with the retentiveness of all he has told me.

This is his fate from now on: for as long as he lives, no matter how much he reforms, he will never be able to escape the horror of his by.

The story of Joshua Milton Blahyi is more than than a story of Africa's mortality and savagery. It is too a story of a man struggling for redemption and change.

His victims cannot forgive him. He is more likely to face a bullet in the head than the day in court he says he wants.

Just his story is evocative of his country as it struggles to get out the demons behind and wait to a future of prosperity and peace.

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Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333465/Liberias-General-Butt-Naked-The-evil-man-world.html

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