The former Liberian warlord and a significant figure in the country’s civil wars from 1989 to 2003, Prince Johnson, passed away on Thursday at the age of 72, according to officials from his political party and the Senate, as reported by AFP.
Johnson, who became notorious after being filmed drinking beer while his fighters tortured then-president Samuel Doe to death in 1990, was also a prominent senator in Liberia.
“Senator Johnson was the longest-serving senator,” said Siaffa Jallah, deputy director of press at the Senate.
“Yes, we lost him this morning. He passed away at Hope for Women (health centre)”, Wilfred Bangura, a senior official in Prince Johnson’s Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction party, told AFP.
The death of Doe was an early bloody episode that would plunge Liberia into two civil wars, which killed some 250,000 people and ravaged the economy.
Prince Johnson, who hailed from the northern region of Nimba, later became a preacher in an evangelical church where he enjoyed wide popularity.
He was also a leading opponent of the creation of a tribunal that would try civil war-related crimes.