Liberia: Inside the Defense Bid to Overturn the Peter Bon Jallah Conviction

A Liberian judge convicted a former national security aide of statutory rape and kidnapping but cleared him of gang rape. Four days later, his lawyers filed a motion arguing that the two halves of the ruling cannot both stand. By Rodney D. Sieh MONROVIA — When Judge Wesseh Alphonsus Wesseh Sr. delivered his verdict on Friday, October 23, he framed the case around three questions: whether the evidence supported a conviction for gang rape, for statutory rape, and for kidnapping. He answered no to the first and yes to the other two. That split is now the battleground. On Tuesday, October 27, at 11:12 a. m. , lawyers for Peter Bon Jallah, 63, a former special assistant to the director of Liberia’s National Security Agency (NSA), filed a motion for a new trial at Criminal Court “E” in Monrovia. The filing, received by Acting Clerk of Court Abraham Richards, asks the judge to set aside his own verdict.

The motion is the first formal test of a ruling that, by the court’s own record, states its conclusions on each charge without detailing how it weighed every witness and exhibit. That gap is what the defense is trying to exploit. What the court decided Jallah was arrested on January 7, 2026, after the mother of a 16-year-old boy complained to the police Women and Children Protection Section. The boy did paid chores at Jallah’s home. A grand jury indicted Jallah and two unidentified men in February on charges of gang rape, statutory rape and kidnapping. The indictment alleged abuse at Jallah’s home on November 29 and December 24, 2025. It also alleged that on January 1, 2026, Jallah lured the boy with an offer of football boots, drove him to a building off Camp Johnson Road in central Monrovia, and held him there for three days while he and two other men abused him. The two other…