Liberia holds funeral for ex-leader Doe decades after assassination

Liberia on Friday held a state funeral for former President Samuel Doe, 35 years after his brutal assassination, as part of efforts to promote national reconciliation.

The ceremony, attended by President Joseph Boakai, took place in Doe’s hometown of Zwedru, alongside the burial of his wife, Nancy, who died in May.

Doe, who ruled from 1980 to 1990 after leading a violent coup, was tortured and killed during the country’s civil war—a key turning point in Liberia’s bloody conflict. His legacy remains divisive, seen by some as a brutal dictator and by others as a leader with positive reforms.

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.

Doe established a regime of terror, he had 13 members of the previous government  publicly executed on a beach and  subsequently jailed or persecuted many of its opponents.

He was elected in a 1985 presidential vote that many observers said was marked by fraud.

The brutality of his regime, combined with declining economic conditions and favoritism toward the Krahn ethnic group of which he was a member, led to increased unpopularity.