ZWEDRU
\nHundreds of people gathered Friday in rural Liberia for the state funeral of authoritarian former president Samuel Doe 35 years after his assassination, part of the country\u2019s ongoing reconciliation efforts over its violent past.
\nDoe\u2019s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two civil wars that killed around 250,000 people and ravaged Liberia\u2019s economy.
\nHe is being commemorated at his home compound in southeastern Grand Gedeh County alongside his wife, Nancy, who died in May and will be buried at the estate.
\nLiberians gathered along the route Friday as the couple\u2019s caskets \u2013 his symbolic, and hers containing her body \u2013 were slowly driven through the county capital of Zwedru on the bed of a truck decorated in bunting in the country\u2019s red, white and blue colors.
\nThe state ceremony is being attended by President Joseph Boakai, who declared a period of mourning this week from Tuesday to Friday, with flags flown at half-mast.
\nHis executive mansion Facebook page said the commemorations are part of a \u201cbroader effort\u201d meant to \u201cpromote national reconciliation.\u201d
\nThe circumstances surrounding Doe\u2019s death mark a notorious episode in Liberia\u2019s history.
\nInfamous warlord Prince Johnson, a key player in the civil wars (1989 to 2003), appeared in a video watching his fighters slowly mutilate and torture Doe to death while he calmly sipped a beer.
\nVarious rumors but little concrete information exists as to the fate and location of Doe\u2019s remains following his death.
\nDoe\u2019s own rise to power was also steeped in violence.
\nHis 1980 to 1990 rule remains divisive, remembered by many Liberians as a brutal dictatorship, while others recall some transformative measures he implemented fondly.
\nLiberian Mercy Janjay Seeyougar said in Monrovia ahead of the funeral that she remembered how Doe once gave her a candy, and that during street cleanings he would \u201cstop and be with the people who are doing the cleaning.\u201d
\nIn 1980, Doe, then an army sergeant in his late 20s, led a coup assassinating president William Tolbert, the last in a line of leaders from the Americo-Liberian ruling class comprised of the descendants of former US slaves.
\nQuickly establishing a regime of terror, Doe had 13 members of the government he had overthrown publicly executed on a beach and his regime subsequently jailed or persecuted many of its opponents.
\nHe was elected in a 1985 presidential vote that many observers said was marked by fraud.
\nThe brutality of his regime, combined with declining economic conditions and favoritism toward the Krahn ethnic group of which he was a member, led to increased unpopularity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ZWEDRU Hundreds of people gathered Friday in rural Liberia for the state funeral of authoritarian former president Samuel Doe 35 years after his assassination, part of the country\u2019s ongoing reconciliation efforts over its violent past. Doe\u2019s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two civil wars that killed around 250,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-487015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n