INTERPOL Issues Warrant for Yeaten's Arrest

International Police (Interpol) has issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Yeaten, former aide de camp of ex-President Charles Taylor on charges of murder and first degree felony.

This follows on the heels of an indictment by First Judicial Circuit, Criminal Assizes “A” for Montserrado County. In the indictment, Defendant Yeaten violated Chapter 14 Section 14.1(a&b) of the New Panel Law of Liberia, Title 26, Liberian Code of Laws Revised, which states: “A person is guilty of murder if he: (a) purposely or knowingly causes the death of another human being; or (b) causes the death under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.

According to sources from the Liberia National Police on Thursday, the arrest warrant follows Yeaten’s indictment last year by Liberia’s First Judicial Circuit Court, following a complaint by women said to be wives of victims of his escapades.

The indictment indicated that between the period of November 1997 and June 2003, Yeaten, also the former director of Charles Taylor’s Special Security Service (SSS), killed John W. Yormie, who was at the time deputy minister for operations at the Ministry of National Security, Isaac Vaye, who was serving as deputy minister for Technical Services at the ministry of Public Works and Samuel Dokie, former minister of Internal Affairs and members of his family.

The international security agency’s arrest warrant also indicated that former SSS director Yeaten, during the National Patriotic Party-led administration, confirmed to the wives of the two men (Yormie and Vaye) in 2003 in the presence of other women from north-eastern Nimba County that their arrested husbands were in his custody and that he would release them the next day, which was June 8, 2003.

Both men were however never seen alive and were believed to have been killed on Yeaten’s orders.

Yeaten, otherwise known as ’50’, was forced to leave Liberia in 2003 after rebel forces loyal to Sekou Damate Conne’s LURD made advances on the capital Monrovia, a move that also forced Charles Taylor into exile in Nigeria. Yeaten’s whereabouts have since remained unknown.

culled from: apa