Most parts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report emphasizes the need to unify and reconcile the people of Liberia. A clause in the TRC report even recommended that the motto on the National Seal be changed from “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here” to “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Together”, as a way of breaking the age-old rift between the Americo-Liberians and the indigenous people. However, the TRC report did not conclude without giving some individuals what can be described as “unbearable task”.
While the TRC purged some participants of the war for speaking truth and expressing remorse at the TRC, recommended a ban from office for some politicians and financiers of the war and prosecution for individuals who committed the most notorious crimes, the leader of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) now Senator, Prince Y. Johnson, is requested to account for the remains of the late President, Samuel K. Doe, especially the skull of the head of the President which, according to the TRC report, he occasionally displayed as a “war trophy”.
This recommendation seems independent from the establishment of a war and economic crimes tribunal for Liberia, as the report categorically requests that the Government of Liberia (GOL) appropriates national memorial ceremonies and erects befitting graves to honor the memory and loss of President William R. Tolbert and President Samuel K. Doe.
Even though the recommendations included such herculean task for Prince Johnson, it fell short to note who is clothed with the responsibility to make the ex-rebel general to account for President Doe’s remains.
A historian who interpreted the TRC clause to the Hot Pepper claimed that the authority is given to any sitting government to request Senator Johnson to account for the remains of the former President, but critics of the government sees it impossible, as Senator Johnson wines and dines with the regime.
During the TRC hearings, Prince Johnson informed the Liberian public that the skull of President Doe was burned and threw it into the sea.
Accounts of the Charles Taylor era recalled that ex-President Doe’s brother, Cheyee Doe, once accused Prince Johnson of eating the remains of his brother. Cheyee Doe announced that he was about to go to Prince Johnson and inquire where he buried his brother, in order that he may assume the remains and give it a burial worthy of a President.
Information has that, after Cheyee Doe’s pronouncement, Prince Johnson took to the radio and called on all Special Forces within the borders of Liberia to protect him from the rage of Cheyee. Whether or not Cheyee Doe pursued his intent died in history.
Section 17.4.1 of the TRC report, which speaks about the burial of former Presidents, says, “The TRC recommends that appropriate national memorial ceremonies be held and a befitting grave be erected with a tomb to honor the memory and loss of President William R. Tolbert, Jr., the 19th President of Liberia who was buried in a mass grave in Monrovia. The TRC also recommends that appropriate national memorial ceremonies be held and a befitting grave be erected with a tomb to honor the memory and loss of President Samuel K. Doe who surrendered to Prince Y. Johnson and was killed while in his custody. Hon. Prince Y. Johnson should be made to account for the remains of the late President, especially the skull of the head of the President which was occasionally displayed by Hon. Johnson as a ‘war trophy’.”