Published: August 10, 2026
MONROVIA – The senior officer who ran daily operations at Monrovia Central Prison says the police operation that pulled him off his post on Aug. 1 was staged in a way that could have set off a mass prison break at a facility holding about 1,800 inmates, including suspects in Liberia’s multimillion-dollar drug case.
Jackson K. Kolako, deputy superintendent for operations at the prison, said in a public statement that three Liberia National Police officers arrested him at about 2 p.m. that day, on duty and in front of his own officers, on the order of Atty. Siafa Bahn Kemokai, who he said was personally present. He said he was held at police headquarters from Aug. 1 to Aug. 7 without a statement ever being taken from him, and that on Aug. 3 he was compelled to have his two mobile phones brought to the police and to hand over all their passwords.
“He ordered my arrest in the presence of a handful of police officers in a manner that appeared calculated to provoke my officers into resisting my arrest, potentially triggering a riot that inmates could have exploited to execute a mass prison break,” Kolako said of Kemokai.
In the same statement, Kolako appealed to President Joseph N. Boakai to move everyone detained at the prison in connection with the drug case to a secure holding facility abroad, preferably in Morocco, while they await trial, so the case does not undermine the administration’s fight against drugs. He asked that the appeal be carried to the president through officials including Cllr. Oswald N. Tweh, whom he addressed as attorney general and justice minister, and through the United States Embassy near Monrovia.
Kolako said he walked away without speaking to avoid being seen in custody by his officers, “as not all of them would have immediately recognized the possible consequences.”
According to him, the confrontation began about 30 minutes earlier, when two men who identified themselves as National Security Agency agents arrived at the prison in shorts, which he said the facility prohibits, and refused to enter their names and purpose in the visitor logbook because their mission was covert. They wanted to speak with an inmate connected to the drug case, he said.
Two senior prison staff members not assigned to the facility then arrived and overrode entry procedures, Kolako said, and one of them told him, “We make the law, and we can break the law.” He said he was told the visitation order sat above the authority of the Department of Corrections, and that when he reached Col. Roosevelt Varney, the prison’s chief superintendent, and Gabriel Fayiah Ndupellar, assistant minister for corrections, by phone with Deputy Superintendent for Administration Janet K. Siryee, both said they had no prior knowledge of the visit.
Kolako said the suspension letter served on him Aug. 7 accused him of disrupting an inmate interview involving an external security agency, and he questioned why the matter went to the police at all. “Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that I had committed such an offense, the Ministry of Justice has an established disciplinary board,” he said. “Why, then, was I turned over to the Liberia National Police?”
He said he was accused on the night of Aug. 3 of being a cartel member and of receiving substantial deposits from drug cartels. He said that in 12 years in law enforcement, after nine years as a classroom teacher and three at the National Transit Authority, he has never taken home a net monthly salary above US$224.
The Ministry of Justice, in a statement dated Monrovia, Aug. 9, said the decision to remove Kolako was not Kemokai’s to make and did not originate with him. “The directive for Officer Kolako’s arrest was issued by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General following information received during the course of the NSA investigation,” the ministry said. “Mr. Kemokai acted in implementation of that directive.”
The ministry said NSA personnel went to the prison that day to interview an inmate as part of a transnational drug investigation, and that information later made available to it indicated Kolako had interacted with the inmate before the attempted interview. The inmate at first declined to cooperate with investigators, the ministry said, and spoke to them only after Kolako was removed from the facility, reporting that he had felt intimidated by him.
The NSA also received intelligence about alleged dealings between Kolako and someone outside the prison, including money allegedly passed to him through that person, the ministry said. It did not put those claims forward as proven. “These matters have not been presented by the Ministry as established facts; rather, they are among the issues the NSA is currently investigating and seeking to verify,” the statement said.
The ministry said the measure against Kolako is a stand-down order dated Aug. 3, pending the outcome of the investigation, and is neither a finding of guilt nor a final disciplinary action. It said an officer’s post inside a facility does not entitle him to advance notice of every intelligence operation run there, particularly where disclosure could compromise an investigation, and it rejected any suggestion that the action taken was personal or arbitrary. It also said no officer would be adjudged guilty merely because an allegation had been made, and invited Kolako to submit any evidence he holds to investigators.
The ministry’s statement does not address Kolako’s account of six days in police custody without a statement being taken, does not say whether he has been charged, and does not respond to his claim that his phones and passwords were surrendered to NSA agents and police Unit 105 on Aug. 3. Kolako said the phones were returned to him only when he left police headquarters on Aug. 7.
He remains on stand-down while the NSA completes its work.
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