‘Most evil man in the world’l

A former Liberian rebel commander who was once known to be ‘the most evil man in the world for the sacrificing and cannibalization of children has said he’s changed and vowed to make up for his heinous crimes and diabolical past. Joshua Blahyi was notorious for sacrificing children and eating their hearts has vowed to find redemption by helping ex-child soldiers off drugs. The gruesome killer was dubbed the “most evil man in the world” after he admitted to heinous crimes against thousands of innocent people. He was one of the most violent and feared figures to rise from the West African country’s civil wars. 

He was popularly known by most as “General Butt Naked” due to fighting battles in the nude – something he believed bestowed him with a “spiritual power” that made him invincible in war. The Liberia civil wars, which raged from 1989 to 1998 and 1999 to 2003, were filled with vile acts of torture, rape, and mass killings. Joshua Milton Blahyi went by a different name when he controlled the streets of Liberia’s capital of Monrovia during its 14-year civil war. Going into urban combat wearing nothing but sneakers and a crazed look. It is estimated that over a quarter of a million people died during the conflicts, Blahyi estimates he is responsible for at least 20,000. 

The crimes he freely admits to don’t stop there. He recruited children to act as his street enforcers, teaching them that killings and mutilations were all part of a game. And so they would also fight naked in the streets of Monrovia. Blahyi himself was a teenager when the conflict broke out. Anecdotal evidence of the atrocities committed by “General Butt Naked” is numerous and graphic.

When Taylor was finally ousted in 2003, the man once known as “General Butt Naked” began a new life as a pastor. These days, when he isn’t preaching, he visits the families of his victims and begs for forgiveness — complete forgiveness. He doesn’t want lip service; he wants the biblical forgiveness that comes from the victim’s heart. 

Those victims don’t want any part of it. Only 19 of the 76 families he has visited heard him out. The remainder goes about as well as one might expect. Blahyi built a mansion where he houses former child soldiers. It’s a place where he says he teaches them skills like farming and bricklaying, he also feeds them. Some of the worst crimes were conducted by child soldiers who were hooked on drugs by their superiors. These children were left with intense addiction after the fighting came to an end, and many fell into a life of crime and broke away from society.

General Butt Naked recalled the atrocities he committed to keep his ‘special spiritual power’ in January 2008, when he testified to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), “Any time we captured a town, I had to make a human sacrifice. They bring to me a living child that I slaughter and take the heart out to eat it,” he told a horrified audience. He was unable to say accurately how many people he had killed in his reign of terror. He added in tears: “But for what I did, it is not less than twenty thousand.” Blahyi said his turning point came in 1996 after Jesus appeared while his hands were covered in the blood of a child.He claims Jesus told him “to stop being a slave”.