The five lawmakers and their accomplices charged with committing an arson attack on the Capitol Building, stood trial for the first time on Tuesday, June 10th, at the Monrovia City Court.
Police alleged, Friday, that the defendants — former Speaker J. Fonati Koffa, Representative Jacob Dabee of Grand Gedeh County District #3, Montserrado County Representatives Dixon Seboe (District #15), Abu Kamara (District #16), and Thomas Ethridge, a staffer from Koffa’s office — had planned and financed the attack, last December.
Their alleged operatives set fire to the plenary room at the center of the Capitol’s third floor and destroyed the dome overhead.
The prosecution’s first witness, Chief Inspector of the Liberia National Police (LNP), Peter W. Johnson alleged that Koffa had paid Etheridge US$1,000 to carry out the attack. Speaking from the witness stand, Johnson claimed Ethridge had admitted to receiving the payment, which the staffer claimed was meant to pay John Nyantee and Amos Koffa, two of the perpetrators of the crime. Etheridge’s confession came quickly, once police arrested him at Koffa’s residence in January this year.
Uneven Scales
Ethridge has been behind bars on arson charges for nearly six months, with no bond posted for his release pending trial.
Meanwhile, his betters in the Capitol — the Representatives who allegedly masterminded the arson attack — spent just three nights as his fellow inmates in the Monrovia Central Prison at South Beach. By last Monday, their lawyers had moved Heaven, Earth, and George Weah himself, to ensure their freedom.
The Monrovia City Court was no less deferential. Magistrate Ben Barco exercised his discretionary powers and granted the lawmakers bail and subsequent release without so much as a hearing.
It is unclear whether Koffa, whom Etheridge served in the House of Representatives, has helped cover legal costs for his former staffer — or hung him out to dry.
The Phone
The quality of Etheridge’s defense counsel is critical, considering he had a bargaining chip that could render this an open-and-shut case. His cell phone has proven to be a treasure trove of evidence related to the fire.
In the phone, police discovered a Whatsapp Group bearing evidence that arson was discussed — a basic faux pas in a criminal conspiracy. According to Johnson, after Nyantee and Amos Koffa set the Plenary Room ablaze, Koffa immediately received an update to that effect, in the Whatsapp group he shares with his co-defendant lawmakers and the senior staff in his office. There, the accomplices allegedly exchanged information regarding plans and finances to carry out the operation.
“In that senior staff WhatsApp chatroom, investigators saw two of Honorable Koffa’s staff [saying Etheridge] was at the police station and they needed somebody to quickly come to the police to get his phone, to avoid the security from identifying those messages that were in Thomas’s phone regarding the fire incident,” Johnson said.
Police also found damning audio and video recordings on Ethridge’s phone, which the staffer claimed were of the four lawmakers discussing the planned attack. According to Inspector Johnson, one of those recordings featured them holding a conversation while riding in a vehicle with license plate # HON 15. During that conversation, Kamara was heard saying “Who’s the President, that man is not president, but you can call him president, he was on the phone.”
When the LNP summoned the Representatives to its headquarters for questioning, investigators played the files and asked them to identify the voices and images therein. But, said Johnson, Koffa alone admitted to recognizing his own voice — although claiming he could not remember the discussion. The rest denied their involvement, describing the files as “AI,” meaning artificial intelligence.
The rapid advancement of technology and the advent of AI has certainly raised the stakes for criminal investigators. But, if the evidence on the phone proves compelling enough to sway the judge and jury, then Etheridge may have left a plea deal — if not immunity — on the table. Then again, given the gravity of the case, the prosecution appears unyielding.
Who did what?
Testifying to the role each of the defendants played in the burning of the Capitol Building, Witness Johnson suggested that Debee was more an accessory to the attack than a perpetrator. He was allegedly aware his colleagues and other persons were about to commit a major crime, but did not report their plans to the law enforcement.
“Having known that,” Johnson said, “he also facilitated the commission of the crime.” Speaking in his capacity as an Investigator, Johnson added, “once you facilitated the commission of a crime, you are also liable for facilitating and commission of the crime thereof.”
Seboe, he said, was the chief financier and getaway man. Johnson testified that, once Nyantee and Amos Koffa, two perpetrators who have been charged in absentia, set fire to the Capitol Building, Rep. Seboe facilitated their travels out of the country.
As for Koffa, Johnson accused the former Speaker of inciting the violence. Koffa had sparked public outcry on July 17th, last year, when he issued a cryptic statement via his Facebook page, which many considered a veiled threat of violence. The post read, “Beware of the Alamo!” Apparently responding to the negative reaction his post had incited, Koffa deleted it no more than ten hours later.
“Alamo, from our investigation standpoint, was a war that existed between Texas and Mexico,” Johnson explained to jurors. “And, in that war, people were killed, women were raped.” Johnsons said, in the LNP’s analysis of the post, “[Koffa] gave motivation and bravery to the defendants to set ablaze the Capitol Building.”
But the post appears circumstantial, at best. Indeed, on cross examination, counsel for the defense asked Johnson whether Koffa was implicated simply because of his Facebook page, where he used the word “Alamo,” a word associated with a war in which people died, and destruction took place.
Johnson admitted that “Koffa was not charged because [he used the word] ‘Alamo,’ but [because] the Alamo [was] used to motivate his soldiers to commit the crime.”
The trial has captured public attention just as much as the crimes and political tumult that preceded it. And, as the proceedings ensue, it remains to be seen whether Koffa — himself a lawyer albeit disgraced and disbarred in the United States — will prove to have been adept at evading his alleged culpability for the arson attack. Given his presence in the WhatsApp Group, he can scarcely claim ignorance of the attack, unless he can prove he never read the messages therein – or never read them in time to have stopped the attack.
His staff, meanwhile, have as much to prove. It is unclear how many of them the prosecution will charge at least as accessories — especially those allegedly seeking to obstruct justice by extracting Etheridge’s phone from the LNP headquarters.
One thing is sure: there are far too many hands on this smoking gun.
The trial continues.
