Samuel Doe

Samuel Kanyon Doe (6 May 1951 – 9 September 1990) was a Liberian politician who served as the 21st president of Liberia from 1986 to 1990.

Samuel Kanyon Doe was born on 6 May 1951 in Tuzon, a small inland village in Grand Gedeh County.

His family belonged to the Krahn people, an important minority indigenous group in this area.

At the age of sixteen, Doe finished elementary school and enrolled at a Baptist junior high school in Zwedru.

Two years later, he enlisted in the Armed Forces of Liberia, hoping thereby to obtain a scholarship to a high school in Kakata.

Still, instead, he was assigned to military duties.

Over the next ten years, he was assigned to various duty stations, including education at a military school and commanding various garrisons and prisons in Monrovia.

He finally completed high school by correspondence.

Doe was promoted to the grade of Master sergeant on 11 October 1979 and made an administrator for the Third Battalion in Monrovia, a position he occupied for eleven months.

He ruled Liberia as Chairman of the People's Redemption Council (PRC) from 1980 to 1986 and then as president from 1986 to 1990.

Doe was a master sergeant in the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) when he staged the violent 1980 coup d'état that overthrew President William Tolbert and the True Whig Party, becoming the first non-Americo-Liberian leader of Liberia and ending 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule.

Doe suspended the Constitution of Liberia, assumed the rank of general, and established the PRC as a provisional military government with himself as de facto head of state.

Commanding a group of Krahn soldiers, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe led a military coup on 12 April 1980 by attacking the Liberian Executive Mansion and killing President William R. Tolbert Jr. His forces killed another 26 of Tolbert's supporters in the fighting.

Thirteen members of the Cabinet were publicly executed ten days later.

Shortly after the coup, government ministers were walked publicly around Monrovia in the nude and then summarily executed by a firing squad on the beach.

The convicted were denied the right to a lawyer or any appeal.

Hundreds of government workers fled the country, while others were imprisoned.

After the coup, Doe assumed the rank of general and established a People's Redemption Council (PRC), composed of himself and 14 other low-ranking officers, to rule the country.

The early days of the regime were marked by mass executions of members of Tolbert's deposed government.

Doe ordered the release of about 50 leaders of the opposition Progressive People's Party, who had been jailed by Tolbert during the rice riots of the previous month.

Shortly after that, Doe ordered the arrest of 91 officials of the Tolbert regime.

Within days, eleven former members of Tolbert's cabinet, including his brother Frank, were brought to trial to answer charges of "high treason, rampant corruption and gross violation of human rights."

Doe suspended the Constitution, allowing these trials to be conducted by a Commission appointed by the state's new military leadership, with defendants being refused both legal representation and trial by jury, virtually ensuring their conviction.

Doe abruptly ended 133 years of Americo-Liberian political domination.

Some hailed the coup as the first time since Liberia's establishment as a country that it was governed by people of native African descent instead of by the Americo-Liberian elite.

Other persons without Americo-Liberian heritage had held the Vice Presidency (Henry Too Wesley), as well as Ministerial and Legislative positions in years prior.

Many people welcomed Doe's takeover as a shift favoring the majority of the population that had largely been excluded from government participation since the country's establishment.

However, the new government, led by the leaders of the coup d'état and calling itself the People's Redemption Council (PRC), lacked experience and was ill-prepared to rule.

In the first alleged plot against his government, nine military personnel arrested two months after the original 1980 coup were reportedly jailed for life.

In June 1981, his government denounced another alleged coup in which thirteen members were executed behind closed doors.

Months later, Thomas Weh Syen, an outspoken critic of some of Doe's policies, including the closure months before of the Libyan diplomatic mission and the forced reduction of staff from fifteen to six at the Soviet embassy, was beaten and arrested on 12 August of that same year, along with four other officers.

They were promised a defense attorney, but none was given, and in three days, they were executed, which caused panic among the citizens of the capital.

Doe dissolved the PRC in 1984 and attempted to legitimize his regime with a new constitution and being elected president in the 1985 general election, which he won despite evidence of election fraud.

Doe opened Liberian ports to Canadian, Chinese, and European ships, which brought in considerable foreign investment and earned Liberia's reputation as a tax haven.

Doe had support from the United States due to his anti-Soviet stance during the Cold War.

Doe's rule was characterized by totalitarianism, corruption, and his favoritism towards ethnic Krahns, which led to growing opposition to his regime from the Liberian public and the United States.

Doe became head of state and suspended the constitution but promised a return to civilian rule by 1985.

The First Liberian Civil War began in December 1989 when the anti-Doe National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Charles Taylor invaded Liberia from the Ivory Coast to overthrow him.

Doe was captured and executed by Prince Johnson on 9 September 1990.

In August 2008, before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Monrovia, Doe's former justice minister, Councillor Chea Cheapoo — who contested the 2011 Liberia Presidential elections — alleged the American CIA had provided a map of the Executive Mansion, enabling the rebels to break into it; that it was a white American CIA agent who shot and killed Tolbert; and that the Americans "were responsible for Liberia's nightmare".