Thanks to Eddie for the head’s up. ComingAnarchy’s favorite genocidal Liberian is making headlines again:

Liberian Ex-Rebel Confesses to Killings
January 21, 2008; 3:56 PM

One of Liberia’s most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked for charging into battle wearing only boots, has returned to confess his role in terrorizing the nation, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.

Joshua Milton Blahyi, who now lives in Ghana, returned last week to face his homeland’s truth and reconciliation commission, this time wearing a suit and tie. His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon’s practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Other former warlords, though, have refused to ask forgiveness, dismissing a commission many in Liberia see as toothless. Blahyi is urging other former killers to come forward: “I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment,” the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. “But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.”

Then there is more old hat about Butt-Naked’s exploits which will be old news to CA readers:

Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil. The sacrifice was typically “the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat,” he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

“More than 20,000 people fell victim (to me and my men). They were killed,” said Blahyi, who dated the beginning of his murders to 1982, when he was ordained as a ritual priest responsible for making human sacrifices before battle. He said when he later led his fighters against the insurgency launched by Charles Taylor, he commanded them to embrace this tradition.

He became a born-again Christian and for a while, traversed the war-wracked streets of Monrovia selling cassettes of his sermons.

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