June 27, (THEWILL) – Hundreds of people gathered on Friday in rural Liberia for the state funeral of former president, Samuel Doe.
The ceremony, held 35 years after his assassination, is part of a “broader effort” meant to “promote national reconciliation”.
Doe’s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two civil wars that killed around 250,000 people and ravaged Liberia’s economy.
He is being commemorated at his home compound in southeastern Grand Gedeh County alongside his wife, Nancy, who died in May and will be buried at the estate.
Liberians gathered along the route on Friday as the couple’s caskets – his symbolic, and hers containing her body, were slowly driven through the county capital of Zwedru on the bed of a truck decorated in bunting in the country’s red, white and blue colours.
The state ceremony is being attended by President Joseph Boakai, who declared a period of mourning this week from Tuesday to Friday, with flags flown at half-mast.
In 1980, Doe, then an army sergeant in his late 20s, led a coup, assassinating president William Tolbert, the last in a line of leaders from the Americo-Liberian ruling class comprised of the descendants of former US slaves. He was elected in a 1985 presidential vote that many observers said was marked by fraud.
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