Liberia: Truth Commission inaugurated

Liberia's president inaugurated a truth commission Monday (February 19) to investigate crimes and human rights abuses committed in the war-battered country over the last quarter century. The seven-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a mandate to investigate crimes committed from 1979 until 2003, when years of civil war came to an end. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who took over last month from a postwar transitional government, said Liberians must be courageous enough "to face up to the past and revile as an affront to all civilized people the despicable acts our people endured during the past 14 years of our civil conflict."