biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1951–90)
|
| biography:
| Liberian soldier and president (1985–90), born in Tuzin, Grand Gedeh Co, Liberia. He joined the army in 1969 and became a sergeant in 1975. In 1980 he led an assault on the presidential palace in which President William Tolbert was killed, thus ending the rule of the Americo-Liberians who had been in office since the 19th-c. Other members and associates of the deposed government were publicly executed. He became commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of state as chairman of the military People's Redemption Council (1981), and was narrowly elected president in 1985 in a promised return to civilian government. Following the outbreak of civil war in 1990, he was captured, tortured, and murdered. |
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