Former Monrovia warlord held in Abidjan

Roosevelt Johnson, a former Liberian warlord with close links to Nigeria, was picked up by armed men from a hotel in Cote d'Ivoire's economic capital, Abidjan, earlier this week, diplomatic sources said on Wednesday. At least one man was injured in a shootout at the suburban hotel on Monday evening as Johnson's guards fired back at the abductors, they added. Ivorian security officials said they had no information that Johnson had been picked up. Hotel workers said Johnson and two other Liberians were taken away from their rooms by unidentified people. Residents near the hotel in the affluent suburb of Deux-Plateaux said a scuffle took place before Johnson was driven away in a red BMW car. A former school teacher in the Grand Gedeh County of eastern Liberia, Johnson led a faction of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO). This fighting group was formed in 1991 by former soldiers, refugees and fighters from the Krahn and Mandingo tribes. Johnson's faction, ULIMO-J, split away as a result of divisions within ULIMO in 1994. Earlier this year, Liberian President Charles Taylor named two of Johnson's former associates in ULIMO-J, Edward Slanger and Paulson Garteh, as leaders of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). This is one of two rebel groups fighting Taylor's government. The other is Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Diplomats and the Liberia government say that Cote d'Ivoire supports MODEL, which has seized control of the Krahn tribal heartland in southeastern Liberian since it appeared on the scene in March. At the start of peace talks between Taylor and the two rebel movements in Ghana last month, West African mediators sent a plane to pick up the MODEL delegates in Abidjan, a move which angered Taylor. ULIMO originally entered Liberia from Sierra Leone. It fought the government before signing an accord with other fighting groups, including Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia, in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire in 1991. The accord, which was brokered by former US president Jimmy Carter and West African states, led to the formation of an interim government. But it collapsed in 1992, leading to renewed fighting. Following the arrival of a West African intervention force in Liberia, Johnson's ULIMO-J faction was given three ministries in a new administration in 1995 under the terms of an agreement worked out in the Nigerian capital Abuja. However internal wrangling led to Johnson being removed by his own men from overall leadership of ULIMO-J in 1996. Taylor was elected president in 1997 and appointed Johnson as transport minister. But a year later Taylor ordered Johnson's arrest for treason. That led to a two-day street battle in the capital, Monrovia, at the end of which Johnson sought refuge in the US embassy. He was later allowed to fly out to exile in Nigeria. Taylor waived the treason charges against Johnson in 2001 and granted him an amnesty. But he continued to live in Nigeria.