Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission held its first public hearings Tuesday, in an attempt to shed light on crimes committed during 14 years of brutal civil war which ended in 2003. The commission, sitting in the capital Monrovia, is based on the South African blueprint which catalogued crimes committed during the apartheid era. Opening the public hearing, Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf appealed to all her compatriots called before the TRC to appear, and to give "honest" accounts of their actions. The public hearings are expected to last until the end of July, a spokesman for the commission said. Statements from victims are heard first, before the accounts of the accused, ahead of final meetings between the two sides. Under the terms of its remit, the commission will then submit a detailed report to the government which will then decide whether to pursue any official charges. The commission was created after the peace accord of 2003 with the idea of compiling an account of all human rights abuses during the successive civil wars which plagued the English-speaking West African country between 1989 and 2003. It is also charged with looking at the years 1979-89, from the bloody coup d'etat which brought Samuel Doe to power in 1980 and the subsequent crimes which marked his regime until it was overthrown in a Christmas 1989 rebellion by Charles Taylor. Separately in the Netherlands Tuesday, Taylor, a former warlord and ex-president of Liberia, went before a war crimes tribunal in the Hague, accused of crimes against humanity in neighbouring Sierra Leone. allafrica.com
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