Published: July 2, 2026
ROBERTSPORT, Grand Cape Mount County — A unanimous jury has convicted Bendu V. Kamara of trafficking in persons, theft of property and criminal conspiracy for running a cross-border operation that lured vulnerable Liberians with false promises of jobs in Senegal, then delivered them to captivity in Guinea, and she now faces sentencing July 8.
Presiding Judge Mamiata Jabateh Sirleaf of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court accepted the verdict, returned after more than two months of trial during the court’s May term, and ordered Kamara immediately remanded into custody pending sentencing next Wednesday.
The conviction stems from an indictment handed down by the Grand Cape Mount County grand jury during the August 2025 term. Kamara was originally charged alongside several co-defendants, including some of her children, on allegations that they operated an organized network recruiting Liberians for lucrative overseas jobs while secretly transporting them to Guinea, where they were exploited and pressured to recruit more victims. Before trial, Kamara won a severance, and her case was heard separately from the remaining defendants.
Prosecutors laid out how the operation functioned through the account of victim Mustapha Barfalie, who testified that he first made contact with the defendant’s daughter, Diana Kamara, through Facebook Messenger. Diana claimed she worked for Sonatel in Senegal and offered to help secure him a job if he paid to process travel documents, then referred him to her mother, who reassured him the opportunity was legitimate.
The state told the court that Kamara convinced Barfalie to sell family property in Brewerville by portraying overseas work as a guaranteed path to success, showing photographs of family members living prosperous lives abroad. Relying on those representations, Barfalie sold family property for 6,500 U.S. dollars and paid Kamara 1,370 dollars for his travel arrangements.
Kamara coordinated the transportation through commercial driver Ibrahim Bah, who moved Barfalie through Guinea while representing that the country was only a transit point to Senegal, prosecutors said. Instead, Barfalie was handed to members of the network in Guinea, where his money and phone were seized, his movement restricted, and he was pressured to recruit other Liberians.
Stranded in Guinea, Barfalie was compelled to contact relatives at home and persuade his brother, Mohamed Barfalie, and his fiancée, Hawa Buttel, to join him. Another family member, Alieu Barfalie, then paid Kamara 2,740 dollars for the couple’s transportation, and she arranged for both to travel the same route into Guinea, according to the prosecution.
Victims testified that after about a week of favorable treatment, they spent nearly six months in harsh conditions. They told the jury they were deprived of adequate food, confined to a restricted compound, forced to work to survive and repeatedly ordered to recruit others through Facebook Messenger by falsely posing as successful workers abroad.
The prosecution’s case rested on six principal witnesses, including the victims, officers of the Liberia National Police, the person who bought the victims’ property, and a witness who described a similar scheme allegedly run by the same network. Prosecutors also introduced police investigative reports, photographs, video recordings and telephone records.
Kamara denied deceiving the victims but admitted receiving money from them and helping with transportation. Defense witnesses acknowledged the recruitment organization in Guinea but maintained the victims had traveled voluntarily, with some conceding that participants were expected to recruit others to advance within the organization and were encouraged to post misleading images of success on social media.
The prosecution pointed to what it called significant inconsistencies in the defense testimony over where Kamara’s relatives lived, the travel arrangements and how the victims were recruited. One of its strongest pieces of rebuttal came from Orange Liberia telephone records, which prosecutors said contradicted defense claims that Kamara never communicated with the transport driver and confirmed multiple contacts between them shortly before the victims left Liberia.
In closing arguments, County Attorney Cllr. Nyonkpao R.G. Daye and Associate Prosecutor Cllr. Peter Howard argued the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Kamara knowingly recruited, deceived, transported and conspired to traffic vulnerable Liberians for profit. Defense lawyers Cllr. Boima Paswee and Cllr. Bokia Kamara urged acquittal, maintaining the victims traveled willingly and that the state had failed to establish criminal intent.
After instructions from Judge Sirleaf, the jury deliberated and returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all three counts. Sirleaf adopted the jury’s decision as the judgment of the court and ordered Kamara incarcerated pending sentencing July 8.
The conviction ranks among Liberia’s most significant recent human trafficking prosecutions and underscores continuing efforts by law enforcement and the judiciary to dismantle transnational networks that exploit job seekers through fraudulent overseas employment schemes.
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