Qualla: Monrovia Church Massacre

Monrovia Church Massacre: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

St. Peter's Lutheran Church on 14th Street in the Sinkor district of Monrovia had been designated a Red Cross shelter. By late July 1990, roughly two thousand people had crowded inside, most of them from the Gio and Mano ethnic groups who had fled their homes as the First Liberian Civil War closed in on the capital. They believed the Red Cross designation meant protection. On the night of July 29, approximately thirty soldiers loyal to President Samuel Doe entered the church and proved them wrong.

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Monrovia Church Massacre: A Capital Under Siege

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The First Liberian Civil War had begun in late 1989, when Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia launched an insurgency from neighboring Ivory Coast. By mid-1990, two rival rebel factions were advancing on Monrovia, and President Samuel Doe, a member of the Krahn et...

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Monrovia Church Massacre: The Night of July 29

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The soldiers who entered the church were members of the Armed Forces of Liberia, predominantly from the Krahn ethnic group. The people inside were overwhelmingly Gio and Mano, ethnic groups associated with the rebel movement. The attack was not a battle or a military operation in...

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Monrovia Church Massacre: Rebuilding What Was Broken

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

St. Peter's Lutheran Church was rebuilt at a cost of one million dollars and reconsecrated in August 1993, while the civil war still raged. The rebuilding was an act of defiance as much as restoration, a community declaring that a place of worship would not remain a crime scene. ...

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Monrovia Church Massacre: Justice, Thirty Years Delayed

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2018, four survivors of the massacre filed a civil lawsuit in a Philadelphia court against Moses Thomas, a former colonel in the Liberian Special Anti-Terrorist Unit who had been living in Pennsylvania. Thomas denied involvement. On September 15, 2021, the court found him resp...

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