African Warlords Hid in Plain Sight in America

The United States provided a safe harbor for decades for warlords who tortured, raped and cannibalized their countrymen in West Africa before settling in America alongside their victims’ relatives.

After ransacking Liberia in civil wars that killed about 250,000 people in the 1990s and 2000s, the war criminals sought shelter in the U.S. and lived among refugees. The warlords took advantage of Americans’ generosity and the federal government’s immigration policies and procedures to pursue the American dream without, in many cases, even concealing their identities.

Liberia’s new government wants justice and is establishing a War and Economic Crimes Court. In an exclusive interview, President Joseph Boakai told The Washington Times that there “will be no witch-hunting,” but the court will enable his country to “put the whole thing behind us and make a move towards building our country.”

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Mohammed Jabateh is a prime example of a notorious criminal living undisturbed in the U.S.

Jabateh, also known as “Jungle Jabbah,” was charged in 2016 with immigration fraud and perjury, but U.S. prosecutors proved the former warlord’s guilt with detailed accounts of his involvement in rape, torture, murder and cannibalism while leading a notorious “liberation movement” in his native Liberia.

After seeking asylum in America in 1998, he had no trouble gaining a foothold in Philadelphia’s Little Africa district by building and operating a car business in his name. Public records show that no federal immigration enforcement officer looked closely at Jabateh’s residency until 2011.

Jabateh wanted to stay permanently and submitted a card that identified him as a “general” of one of the warring factions in the Liberian civil war of the 1990s, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agent testified at his October 2017 trial.

Norman deMoose, the USCIS agent, told the court that the identification card and Jabateh’s answers to questions, including about terrorist activity, alarmed him. Mr. deMoose raised concerns internally, but Jabateh was not arrested until April 2016.

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A jury convicted Jabateh in October 2017 after listening to prosecutors and several other witnesses detail his role in a variety of crimes, including terrorism and torture. In 2018, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but he has continued to push for his early release.

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