Violent Ontario end for alleged Liberian warlord
The victim of a home invasion murder in London, Ont., is reportedly a former general in a West African rebel militia who once was the subject of intense investigation by Canadian war crimes investigators.
Bill Horace, 44, was killed in the early morning around 4:40 a.m. Sunday when four men, three of them in hooded sweatshirts and hospital-style face masks, forced their way into a house.
The London Free Press reported a neighbour saw two go to the front door and two to the back, before hearing breaking glass, a struggle, and seeing Horace run out the front door where he was shot. Police said Horace’s family was in the home at the time.
CTV quoted a neighbour who heard one gun shot and saw the men leave in two car
Paramedics took the victim to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police in London said they do not believe this was a random incident, but said nothing about why Horace, who lived in Toronto, may have been specifically targeted.
“The London Police Service has received several media inquiries about the identity of the deceased and possible historical association to National Patriotic Front in Liberia. The London Police Service is aware of these inquiries, but cannot confirm this fact at this time,” a statement said.
Several media outlets, in Canada and Africa, identified Horace as the former leader of a rebel militia fighting the brutal war in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s.
Canadian journalist and historian Michael Petrou was among those who drew the link on Twitter. His reporting a decade ago in Maclean’s revealed Horace was a former general in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) living freely in Toronto despite being accused by witnesses and former associates of conducting and commanding “atrocities on a massive scale.”
“Everyone around here used to go to the big palm nut farm to cut palm and make oil to eat and sell,” according to a witness at Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation, quoted by Petrou. “Gen. Bill Horace and his men were passing. They entered the plantation and accused us of looting the place. He then ordered his men to arrest people. They started chasing us, and everybody was running all over the place. They then started firing at us. I first saw one woman fall. The bullet hit her on the head. Her husband was crying. Then one of the other fighters shot him also. Both of them died instantly.
Two years later, in 2012, it emerged Canada was formally investigating Horace for war crimes.
That same year, the former president of Liberia and leader of the NPFL, Charles Taylor, was convicted at the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone for planning, aiding and abetting war crimes, some of the worst in recorded history. He is now serving a 50 year sentence in a British prison.
“Many of us (Liberians) are here in Canada as a result of that war,” Leo Johnson, president of the Liberian Association of Canada, said. “We became refugees directly as a result of that war … It has become a reality in the Liberian community that our community is a mix of victims of war crimes and the perpetrators at the same time.”