MODEL fighters accused of looting major rubber plantation

Fighters of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel group have seized and looted Liberia's fourth largest rubber plantation in the Sinoe county in the southeast of the country, plantation officials said on Tuesday. Daniel Saydee, the administrative manager of the Sinoe Rubber Plantation, told reporters that MODEL fighters, claiming to have been instructed by their commanders, looted and seized the plantation. "The fighters have prevented us from resuming our regular business at the plantation and our investigations show that over US $400,000 worth of tapped rubber and machineries were looted by MODEL fighters," Saydee said. Kai Farley, a senior MODEL commander, denied the accusation. "The information is misleading. I even contacted my men in Sinoe this morning they informed me that nothing like that happened," he told IRIN. But Saydee insisted, "At present, the fighters are still occupying the plantation, while some of our workers who were on the plantation had to flee the area into nearby bushes for safety because of the harassments by MODEL men." UN peacekeepers have not yet deployed into Sinoe county and other parts of southeastern Liberia which are still controlled by MODEL. A delegation of village elders from RiverCess county, which adjoins Sinoe, recently complained to the government that MODEL fighters were still harassing civilians there and stealing their possessions. Last week the Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU), a Liberian environmentalist group, reported that illegal logging was still being carried out under MODEL supervision in Maryland county near the border with Cote d'Ivoire. The UN Security Council banned Liberian timber exports last year to prevent former President Charles Taylor from using timber revenues to buy arms. Human Rights Watch issued a report in late January titled: "The Guns are in the Bushes: Continuing Abuses in Liberia" which expressed alarm at the harassment of civilians all three armed factions in areas outside of UN peacekeepers deployment. "With the UN peacekeeping forces only deployed in parts of the country, all three warring factions continue to commit rape, looting and forced labor of civilians in areas under their control. The importance of the UN deployment in deterring abuses cannot be overstated," the New York-based organisation said. A peace agreement last August ended 14 years of civil war in Liberia, but the gunmen loyal to Taylor's former government and two rebel movements, MODEL and LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) are still awaiting disarmament by UN peacekeepers. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) currently has about 11,500 troops on the ground and has not yet begun work on the preparation of four proposed cantonment sites where an estimated 53,000 fighters will hand in their weapons. Senior UNMIL officials said last week that the peace-keeping force should reach its full strength of 15,000 men in mid or late March and be fully deployed across Liberia by the end of April.