Person
Joshua Blahi
The Liberian warlord known as General Butt Naked, who publicly confessed to mass killing and now runs a rehabilitation programme — interviewed by Harry over two days about whether a man can change.
Joshua Blahi
A Liberian former warlord, known during the civil war by the alias General Butt Naked, and now a preacher running a rehabilitation programme for street children in Monrovia.
He is a public figure in Liberia — a street is named after the alias, and Harry finds him by asking in a market. He agreed to be interviewed, and the entire video is that interview.
Obs: everything below is what Blahi says about himself, recorded as his claims. Harry does not verify any of it and neither does this page. The physical detail of what he describes is not reproduced here.
What he says he did
- He fought without clothes, which is where the alias comes from. His account is that he was a priest to his tribe with no military training, that his role was spiritual protection for fighters, and that being naked made access to what he calls the spiritual realm faster.
- He was taken at seven years old by his father and handed to traditional warriors, who kept him blindfolded through every daylight hour for four years — from seven to eleven — as a test of obedience, and trained him in ritual sacrifice of animals.
- From there it moved to human sacrifice, which he describes as monthly for fourteen years and, during the war, as often as two or three a day. The victims were largely children. He says he was indoctrinated to believe the practice moved a person from this life into the service of a deity, and that at the time he did not understand himself to be killing anyone.
- His unit was called Naked Base Commando, at most 78 people, recruited between roughly eight and fifteen years old.
- He financed the war by sea. Diamonds were taken out to ships in international waters and traded for arms, ammunition and drugs, which were handed on to be distributed. He says he went personally, several times, on three-day trips.
- A building in central Monrovia was his base, and he says thousands died in it. He says it stands derelict while everything around it is developed, because people believe it is haunted.
On the number he is responsible for: asked directly, he claims responsibility for around 20,000 people (from video – unverified) — including, on his own reasoning, everyone killed by children he armed. The video’s opening montage carries a figure of 200,000 over the same exchange; the two do not agree, and this page records the number he gives in the interview.
What he says changed him
A mother brought him a three-year-old child. He says it was the first time his conscience moved and he could not do it, kept the child for hours while a replacement was sought, and in the end went through with it.
He then describes a vision — a figure suspended in the air, brighter than the sun, speaking to him in his own dialect and calling him a slave rather than a king, telling him to repent and live or refuse and die. He says he accepted Christ on his birthday, 30 September.
What he does now
- A rehabilitation programme for street children, which he says has taken 636 children off the street in nearly twenty years. Harry notes the children around him were not summoned for the camera and were already there.
- He does not claim to be redeemed. Asked whether the work repays the past, his answer is the most quoted thing in the video: no good deeds of my person can make my bad deeds good. He says he considers himself to be serving a life sentence.
- Asked what he would say to his younger self: that violence is an everlasting prison, and not to get involved with it.
One of his victims
Harry asked to meet someone Blahi had harmed, and was introduced to a man named Danso, who tells his own story on camera: a family dispute became a revenge attack when the man involved joined Blahi’s forces, his parents were killed, and his house was destroyed with an RPG. He says he still does not know where his family is.
He also says he has forgiven Blahi, on Christian grounds — that he could not ask God’s forgiveness while withholding his own — and that he now regards him as a father and attends his church.
Harry does not resolve this and neither does the bundle.
Harry’s own verdict
Delivered at the end, and worth keeping whole: there is no question he was a monster and nothing he can do will forgive the crimes. What is different is what came after — he did not run, did not hide behind excuses, and came back and confessed in a country where silence would have been safer, since nobody had ever testified against him. Harry says he saw the community work with his own eyes, calls Blahi a product of a brutal system, and puts the question to the audience rather than answering it.
