Face to face with General Butt Naked - 'the most evil man in the world'By Edna Fernandes
Last updated at 2:59 AM on 28th November 2010
Comments (15) Add to My Stories It is 1982 and as day breaks in Liberia, the Krahn tribe prepares for the initiation of its high priest.
Against the sound of the drumbeat, he is taken to an isolated area, led by a man in a carved black mask.
The priest stands before an altar, naked.
The elders bring a little girl, unclothe her and smear her body with clay. The priest slays the child.
In a ritual that spans three days, her heart and other body parts are removed and eaten.
In the course of those days the priest has a vision: he meets the devil who tells him he will become a great warrior.
The devil says to increase his power he must continue the rituals of child sacrifice and cannibalism.
The initiation is complete and the priest is now one of the most powerful leaders in West Africa. The priest is 11 years old.
As prophesied, the boy priest grew up to become one of Liberia's most notorious warlords: General Butt Naked.
He and his boy soldiers would charge into battle naked apart from boots and machine guns.
The initiation sacrifice that he carried out aged 11 was the first life he took out of the 20,000 deaths for which he now claims responsibility.
His rivals dispute the number of deaths as impossible to prove.
Yet what is indisputable is that during Liberia's 14 years of civil war, the man became known as one of the most inhumane and ruthless guerrilla leaders in Africa's history.
After the former General Butt Naked confessed his past to Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2008, one internet blogger asked: 'Is this the most evil man who ever lived?'
His crimes included child sacrifice, cannibalism, the exploitation of child soldiers and trading blood diamonds for guns and cocaine, which he fed to boy soldiers as young as nine.
Yet today he says he is a reformed man. In July 1996, the warlord had 'an epiphany'.
Having spent 14 years holding nightly conversations with the devil, he had a blinding vision of Christ who told him to end the killings and convert.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z16Zw4pFac 
