In the spring of 2016, U.S. prosecutors charged Mohammad Jabbateh with four counts of perjury and immigration fraud for making false statements during his pursuit of asylum and later permanent legal residency in the United States.Footnote 1 At the time of the indictment, Jabbateh was a Liberian national living in East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, and the owner of a shipping company.Footnote 2 The indictment charged that Jabbateh lied to U.S. immigration officials to conceal the role he played in Liberia's first civil war as the warlord “Jungle Jabbah.”Footnote 3 In October of 2017, a jury convicted Jabbateh on all four counts.Footnote 4 Jabbateh is reportedly the first person prosecuted and found guilty in connection with atrocities carried out during Liberia's first civil war, which ran from 1989 to 1997.Footnote 5
The indictment alleged that Jabbateh was a commander within the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), a rebel group which fought against the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and its leader Charles Taylor.Footnote 6 It further stated that:
During his overall time as a ULIMO commander …, defendant Mohammed Jabbateh, a/k/a/ “Jungle Jabbah,” either personally committed, or ordered ULIMO troops under his command to commit the following nonexclusive list of acts: 1) the murder of civilian noncombatants; 2) the sexual enslavement of women; 3) the public raping of women; 4) the maiming of civilian noncombatants; 5) the torturing of civilian noncombatants[;] 6) the enslavement of civilian noncombatants; 7) the conscription of child soldiers; 8) the execution of prisoners of war; 9) the desecration and mutilation of corpses; and 10) the killing of any person because of race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinion.Footnote 7
In December of 1998, Jabbateh applied for asylum in the United States.Footnote 8 In his asylum application statement, Jabbateh described running from NPFL troops in 1990 as they invaded his town and murdered his brother and mother.Footnote 9 He claimed that he had spent the next two years in a refugee camp, where he had become involved with the ULIMO or its precursor, and that he later returned in 1992 to the capital of Liberia, Monrovia, where he had served as a security official at the executive mansion.Footnote 10 He described himself as having been captured and tortured after Taylor came to power in 1997.Footnote 11
In January 1999, a U.S. immigration officer interviewed Jabbateh to determine whether his application for asylum should be granted. Jabbateh answered “No” when asked “1) ‘[H]ave you ever committed a crime?’; and 2) ‘[H]ave you ever harmed anyone else?’”Footnote 12
In December 1999, the United States granted Jabbateh asylum.Footnote 13 Three years later, Jabbateh applied for legal permanent residency.Footnote 14 During the application process, he responded “No” to the following two questions on the applicable form:
Have you ever engaged in genocide, or otherwise ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the killing of any person because of race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinion?
… [H]ave you, by fraud or willful misrepresentation of a material fact, ever sought to procure …, or procured, a visa, other documentation, or entry into the U.S. or any immigration benefit?Footnote 15
After an extensive investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in Philadelphia and its Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia charged Jabbateh “with two counts of fraud in immigration documents and two counts of perjury.”Footnote 16
On October 2, 2017, Jabbateh's trial began. During the eight-day trial, seventeen Liberian witnesses testified for the prosecution about Jabbateh's war time acts.Footnote 17 One witness recounted how Jabbateh's soldiers killed her husband and subsequently forced her to cook his heart, while others described rapes, murders, and horrific acts perpetrated by Jabbateh and his soldiers.Footnote 18 No witnesses took the stand for Jabbateh, but ten character witnesses observed in sworn statements that they knew him to be a “peaceful, law-abiding and non-violent person.”Footnote 19
On October 18, 2017, the jury found Jabbateh guilty of all four counts of the indictment.Footnote 20 In a press statement announcing Jabbateh's guilty verdict, Special Agent Marlon Miller of HSI's Philadelphia office observed:
The United States will not be a safe haven for human rights violators and war criminals. … Today's verdict will help bring justice to the victims of Mr. Jabbateh's atrocities. … HSI will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that those who have committed such acts abroad never evade justice and accountability for their crimes by hiding among their victims in the United States.Footnote 21
Jabbateh's sentencing will occur some time after the end of the trial.Footnote 22 He faces up to thirty years’ imprisonment in the United States and deportation after he completes his prison sentence.Footnote 23
