ULSU Student Leaders Flee To Ghana

Suspended leaders of the University of Liberia Students Union (ULSU) have fled to Ghana for fear of their lives, press reports said Tuesday.

ULSU president Alphonso Nimene said he and 14 other colleagues fled Liberia after receiving "credible information that they would be eliminated" by state agents.

Nimene said the information was corroborated by constant surveillance the student leaders noticed was being kept on them by men believed to be state security operatives.

He said they took six days trekking through dense forest in order to escape the country.

But government denied the students' claim, saying the accusation was "intended to defame the government while seeking favour from (its) international detractors."

The government said immigration and security authorities confirmed the students were allowed to cross the Liberian/Ivorian border without hinderance.

The university board of trustees suspended Nimene and his friends last month after a probe into the police raid of the university campus in March.

The police raided the campus, along with soldiers of the dreaded Anti-Terrorist Unit, when university president Ben Roberts invited them to disperse a student rally.

The students were rallying to raise funds for four Liberian journalists detained by the government on charges of espionage.

The decision to suspend the student leaders drew criticism from faculty members, including one who resigned, as well as the students on grounds that the brutality meted out by the police was ignored, and that the students had the right to assembly.

A rally and demonstration against the board's decision by the students was annulled by the justice ministry, which threatened to arrest any student who defied its ban on the rally.

The justice ministry then alleged the university campus had been infiltrated by collaborators of the dissidents fighting government in the north of the country to cause chaos in Monrovia.

The students said this claim about "dissident collaborators" being on the university campus was one of the reasons that led them to flee.