MONROVIA – It seems one of the country’s major foreign concessionaires, Bea Mountain, is in the news yet again, but not for any good reason. Allegation of land grab, forceful eviction of land owners and other capitalist excesses are being alleged by former Solicitor General Cllr. Sayma Cyrenius Cephus, who also contends that the Turkish company is issuing officers of the Armed Forces of Liberia as canon fodders and pawns. He wrote Defense Minister alerting her about the ongoing situation. The Analyst reports
Cllr. Syrenius Cephus, Global Lead Counsel and Senior Defense Counsel/ICC/IRMCT/Rule 42 &43 has alerted authorities of the Ministry of Defense about the use of officers of the Armed Forces of Liberia by expatriates working with Bea Mountain Mining Company to engage into extra-judicial acts in Grand Cape County, the operational area of the company.
IN a communication dated July 22, 2025, Cephis said his firm has got reports “that some members of the Armed Forces of Liberia(AFL) who are deployed in Bea Mountain Mining Company(BMMC) concession areas in Grand Cape Mount County are serving as ‘private bodyguards’ for expatriates, and running errands, like “yana boys” while others are allegedly involved in illegal land grab, and other forms of extra-judicial activities intended to illegally evict villagers from their ancestral lands in order to expand BMMC’s gold mining activities.”
“Further, we have gathered from credible sources that the AFL soldiers are behaving in a form and manner that falsely suggests that BMMC’s continued pollution of streams and rivers with dangerous chemicals such as sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide, and the indiscriminate detonation of dangerous explosives within close proximity of communities are sanctioned by the government of Liberia and that the AFL is there to protect Bea Mountain against its own citizens,” Cllr Cephus said in the letter, a copy shared with the Analyst.
He reminded authority of the ministry on how the AFL “has no excellent or credible history in defense of the sovereignty of our Motherland, and there is a historical compelling evidence to prove that by the time the Liberian Frontiers Force(LFF) was founded in 1904, Captain Caldwell had effectively annexed the huge stretch of land from Tieni, Grand Cape Mount County to Shebro Island to Sierra Leone(1850); and Samora Toure had surrendered to the French, a huge stretch of land from Kablaken, Harper District, Maryland County to the Cavalla River in San Pedro, Cote D’Ivoire(1898).”
He continued: “However, what was left of the Liberian Frontier Force (LFF) that later became the Liberian National Guard (LNG) and now modern day Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), was that it became nothing but mere ‘tax collectors’ and ‘private bodyguards’, and only used to harass and abuse the rights of peaceful citizens and enforce nonresistance to Americo-Liberian rule or members of the pre-1980 True Whig Party (TWP) oligarchy.
“Beyond that, the AFL became proficient in performing excellent parades at state ceremonies and existed as a force of repression with its crude history of being the most illiterate Armed Forces ever to have ever walked the face of the earth, and they collected taxes that only benefited their ‘Americo-Liberian masters’ until 1980 when the AFL killed its own masters in a military coup d’état.”
The former solicitor general to the Minister of Defense that it was needless to remind her or to recite the role of the AFL in Liberia’s recent civil crisis, and how it became a “tribal army”, turning itself into a horde of barefaced murderers, rapists, and shameless looters, by taking blind orders from the power that be at the expense of its own constitutional duty to the Liberian State.
“All cynicisms aside, I don’t really see the relevance of the AFL to the stability of Liberia, since it is all too clear in the African Union (AU) charter that no nation can increase its boundary after independence,” he added. “Again, the AFL appears to be replaying a known stanza of its horrific past that is absolutely at odds with the intent and purpose for which it was founded.”
Today as before, the AFL is blindly accepting “unwritten instructions” and is deployed in Bea Mountain concession areas as “private bodyguards” although it was trained and is being paid by taxpayers, he further emphasized.
He wondered how the soldiers of the AFL would allegedly accept to be used in Bea Mountain’s campaign of illegal land grab, and other forms of extra-judicial activities under the pretext of being “loyal.”
Cephus further informed the Defense Ministry authorities: “I am to inform you that this communication is not a threat but a timely reminder and a public service notice, intended to call your attention (Minister of Defense and the Chief of State) that the condition under which the AFL may be deployed in any community is provided for under Article 85 of the 1986 Constitution(as amended), which expressly states: ‘The President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, may order any portion of the Armed Forces into a state of combat readiness in defense of the Republic, before or after the declaration of a state of emergency, as may be warranted by the situation. All military power or authority shall at all times, however, be held in subordination to the civil authority and the Constitution.’
“Also, Article 86(b) of the 1986 Constitution (as amended) provides: “A state of emergency may be declared only where there is a threat or outbreak of war or where there is civil unrest affecting the existence, security or well-being of the Republic amounting to a clear and present danger.’”
That said, Cllr. Cephus noted, “we would like to know the source of the Minister or Chief of Staff’s authority for the deployment of AFL soldiers in Bea Mountain Mining Company(BMMC) concession area and the constitutional basis same.”
He said the 1986 Constitution provides that the deployment of the AFL becomes imperative in time of national emergency or where there is a clear and present danger to the stability of Liberia, but that such exercise must be done in consultation with the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.
“Was there a declaration of a state of emergency?” he asked. “As I have indicated somewhere in this communication, illegal land grab, deliberate and indiscriminate pollution of rivers and streams, destruction of traditional shrines and forceful eviction of villagers from their ancestral lands are all war crimes and these are the very things that Bea Mountain and the AFL are involved in against the people of Liberia.”
He insisted that the deployment of the AFL in Bea Mountain concession is problematic because Bea Mountain’s sister company, MNG Gold or Arcelor Mittal does not have AFL soldiers deployed in its concession areas; and so too is Golden Veroleum.
“In light of that, we would be pleased if you could provide us any written directive or mandate given you by the President to deploy AFL soldiers in Grand Cape Mount County,” the Global Lead Counsel indicated.
“Remember, this is the modern Liberian Army, and so we will expect that every action taken by the New AFL will be in conformity with the law and upon “written directive or mandate” from the President of Liberia as Commander-In-Chief. We will reject any justification that the deployment regime was inherited from the past administration.”