Daily News | Former Philly restaurant server ordered to pay $84M for massacre 600 civilians during Liberian civil war
A former server at a Philadelphia restaurant has been ordered to pay $84 million in damages to four citizens of Liberia for leading a massacre that resulted in the deaths of more than 600 civilians seeking sanctuary in a church during the West African nation’s first civil war.
“Although no amount of damages will provide adequate redress for what [the victims] have suffered,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Lynne A. Sitarski wrote in her Aug. 16 order, “a substantial award could have some deterrent effect on future would-be human rights abusers.”He fled back to Liberia after he was outed by the lawsuit to avoid the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts. Reached there by phone on Monday, he dismissed the court order as “stupidity” but otherwise declined to comment.on Saturday.
Instead, one of the plaintiffs and two former members of the Armed Forces of Liberia who served as witnesses in the case said they saw him standing outside the gates to the church directing the soldiers who opened fire. The plaintiffs — who filed their case under pseudonyms for fear of retaliation in Liberia — described the harrowing aftermath in declarations submitted the court.
Another plaintiff described waiting until hours after the soldiers had left before she dared try to climb out from under the crush of corpses that had buried her. Nearly three decades later, Thomas scoffed at the lawsuit’s effort to blame him for the Lutheran church attack duringHe insisted that he never left the presidential palace on the day of the massacre and that he and his unit had provided protection for the survivors afterward.
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