Lawyers end boycott

Lawyers in Liberia have ended a four-week strike after being ordered by the Supreme Court to return to work or face either a one-year suspension or disbarment. "Most of them attended the November term of courts on Monday," a diplomatic source in the capital, Monrovia, told IRIN on Tuesday. The Pan African News Agency (PANA) reported the vice-president of the bar, Samuel Clarke, as saying that the lawyers remained "deeply saddened by the detention of our colleagues" even though they were adhering to a unanimous decision by members of the Liberia National Bar Association (LNBA) to end the boycott. That decision was made on Friday. The lawyers had called the boycott to protest the jailing since October of two of their colleagues by the country's house of representatives. They were ordered detained for "contempt" after describing the detention of LNBA's President, Emmanuel Wureh, as "unconstitutional" and for inciting other lawyers to boycott all court proceedings. Wureh had also been detained on the order of the house of representatives. Liberia's Information Ministry reported the majority whip in the lower house of parliament as saying on 17 October that they would not be released unless they retracted their statement. The Supreme Court said in a statement published on Monday by Monrovia's Inquirer newspaper that the strikers had not only violated their duties as lawyers and the oath they had taken on being admitted to the bar, but that their action had paralysed the judiciary.