MONROVIA – Liberia’s Justice Minister-designate, Cllr. Betty Lamin Blamo, has pledged that the state’s power to prosecute will not be turned into a weapon against political opponents or a shield for friends of those in power, whether in the public or the private sector.
By Obediah Johnson
Appearing before the Liberian Senate for her confirmation hearing on Monday, October 26, Blamo acknowledged that fear of selective prosecution is widely held among Liberians, and said no case would be prosecuted for reasons outside the law.
“I am not unaware of concerns expressed in the press, at the bar, and in ordinary homes that the prosecutorial power of the state can be sharpened against opponents and [used as a] shield for friends. I take this concern seriously. A case will be brought because the evidence supports it and for no other reason.”
She told senators that while she would advance President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s policy agenda and remain accountable to him and to the National Legislature, her first loyalty would be to the Constitution and laws of Liberia.
No case lacking evidence would go forward, she said, however loud the public demand for it, and none would be pursued on the basis of political affiliation or status.
“Where the law is applied evenly, disputes end in courtrooms instead of on the streets, and ordinary citizens can plan their lives; where the law bends to power, nothing else that the government does will hold. The decision to prosecute will rest on facts, the law, the standard of truth and the standard of proof, and never on political affiliation, county of origin, wealth or status.”
She vowed not to be a minister who prosecutes adversaries with zeal and friends with reluctance, and said she would recuse herself from any case involving a conflict of interest.
Drug cartels
Blamo said illicit drug trafficking continues to destroy the future of young Liberians, and vowed to go after the importers, traders, financiers and protectors of the trade.
She said her administration would settle for “nothing less” than dismantling drug cartels operating in Liberia, while ensuring rehabilitation for those struggling with addiction.
“Liberia will not be a transit country, a laundering point, or a soft place to do bad business. Our success will be measured not by the number of arrests, but by convictions.”
The test already on her desk
Blamo’s promises will be measured first against the biggest narcotics prosecution in Liberia’s history, a case she inherited and that has already drawn accusations of both political targeting and uneven justice.
In June, authorities seized about 237.6 kilograms of cocaine at Roberts International Airport. In July, about four tons, valued at an estimated US$317 million, were found at a warehouse in Duazon. West Africa has long been used as a transit route for South American cocaine bound for Europe.
On October 7, a Montserrado County grand jury indicted 20 people in the US$317 million case, including former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, who served under President George Weah from 2018 to 2024 and is standard bearer of the opposition National Patriotic Party. She faces eight counts, including drug trafficking, criminal conspiracy and money laundering. She denies the charges and is presumed innocent.
Howard-Taylor was arrested at Roberts International Airport on August 19 and held at the Monrovia Central Prison, the same facility Blamo cited for its overcrowding with pre-trial detainees, before being placed under house arrest on medical grounds.
Her arrest has fed exactly the concern Blamo addressed before the Senate. Weah has called the prosecution bogus and accused the Boakai administration of interfering with justice, and members of her party have warned of “growing public perceptions” that the case is politically motivated. The government insists its cases rest on evidence, not politics.
Critics, including
FrontPageAfrica, have raised the opposite concern: that the state moved quickly against an opposition figure but slowly against others named in the same investigation.
Among them is Mark Quiah, the former deputy director for operations at Roberts International Airport. He was named in a June writ of arrest and dismissed by President Boakai in late July, but he was left off the first charge sheet filed that month, even though it placed him in the alleged scheme, and was reportedly cooperating with investigators. He was among those indicted in October. The indictment also names a former National Security Agency deputy director, Gerald Foley Smith, and two senior police officers, Deputy Commissioner Anthony T. Blaye and Assistant Commissioner Wadell W. Kwarbo, along with Croatian, Ukrainian and other foreign nationals. Several defendants remain at large.
Police Inspector General Gregory Coleman said in July that the Duazon operation was “definitely sanctioned by state actors at the very, very senior level”, but he has named no one. Blamo’s vow to go after the “protectors” of the drug trade will be judged on whether those actors are ever identified and charged.
Her warning about poorly preserved evidence also bears directly on the case. The US$317 million seizure has already been destroyed, which raises chain-of-custody concerns similar to those in an earlier cocaine case under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, when most of the drugs were destroyed before trial and the case ended in acquittal.
Blamo, who served as Solicitor General under Sirleaf, took over the ministry as acting minister on September 10. President Boakai had removed her predecessor, N. Oswald Tweh, and Solicitor General Augustine Fayiah a week earlier, while the prosecutions were under way.
The Executive Mansion described the move as an effort to strengthen institutions and did not link it to the drug probe. The October indictments were returned on her watch.
The weak link
Blamo identified the hand-over between police investigators and state prosecutors as one of the weakest links in Liberia’s criminal justice chain.
Too many cases collapse, she said, not because the accused are innocent, but because investigations are incomplete, evidence is poorly preserved and charges do not reflect the facts. The result: victims lose faith in the justice system, the guilty go free and the innocent languish in detention.
She promised to continue assessing the capacity of the ministry’s prosecution department and to draw up a clear roadmap to make it more effective. Cases, she said, must be evidence-based and professionally prepared, protecting the rights of the accused while assuring victims that serious crimes will be lawfully prosecuted.
Prosecutors quitting
None of this, Blamo admitted, can be achieved without well-trained staff. Many prosecutors have left the ministry since the government harmonized public-sector salaries, she said.
She urged lawmakers to provide budgetary support to recruit more prosecutors and to raise the pay of those still in service to reflect the risks and importance of their work.
Jailed but never tried
Blamo told senators that the conditions in which people are detained are a measure of the government’s commitment to human dignity.
Although Article 21 of the Liberian Constitution guarantees, among other things, that an accused person must be brought before a court within 48 hours, 2,848 of the 4,125 people held in prisons across the country – about 69 percent – had never been tried as of September 2026, she said. Some have not even been indicted.
At the Monrovia Central Prison alone, about 1,312 of the roughly 1,888 inmates – nearly 70 percent – are pre-trial detainees. Many, she said, are poor and cannot afford a lawyer or bail.
The ministry has begun reviewing the files of pre-trial detainees at the Monrovia Central Prison, an exercise she said would be extended nationwide once she is confirmed. She also called for additional correctional facilities to be built at Cheesemanburg in Montserrado County.
The government, she said, will either prosecute or release pre-trial detainees in accordance with the law. The ministry will also work with the judiciary to expand magisterial inspections, and with public defenders, the Liberia National Bar Association and legal aid providers to ensure that no one stays behind bars for long simply because they lack a lawyer.
“We must also state that the issue of pretrial detention and overcrowding of prisons is an issue that requires policy reform. If someone commits a crime, we can’t just let them go; we have to prosecute them. And so, the issue of pretrial detainees is a serious issue.”
She noted that specialized courts are overwhelmed with cases involving people accused or indicted for non-bailable offenses.
Corruption
Describing corruption as a menace in Liberia, Blamo said the ministry would work with the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC), the General Auditing Commission (GAC) and the Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA) to investigate and prosecute those accused of corruption and to recover stolen assets for the Liberian people.
“If we are confirmed, we will pursue matters strictly on the basis of the facts.”
She also promised a crackdown on human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence, saying the interests of ordinary Liberians would come first in every decision the ministry makes.