Area Liberians Recount Horrors for Commission

Civilians flee mortar fire in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2003. Liberian refugees in the Washington area are being asked to describe the brutality they witnessed. (By Ben Curtis -- Associated Press)

Forced out of their home, Brewer, her mother and eight siblings set off on what became a two-year walk through the eastern hinterlands of Liberia, away from people who might know them and reveal their father's connection to the military regime. The family would stop along the way to stay in villages for days, sometimes months.

Not infrequently, fighters would drag away her brothers, tie them up and interrogate them. Were they from the wrong ethnic group? Did they have any connection to the former government?

"Everybody, we said, no matter what, you cannot be talking!" Brewer recalled later in her apartment, sitting on the edge of her sofa in a burgundy bathrobe. "Then the whole family -- dead."

The family made it to a refugee camp in Ivory Coast in 1992, then two years later to another camp in Ghana. In 2000, the family arrived in the United States. Today, she and her Liberian husband and friends often discuss their nation's progress and politics. Never its carnage.

But she will give a statement.

"In order to let things go, you have to be able to speak out," she said. "If you keep things in, you always have that hatred."

For her part, Brewer said she will be satisfied if Taylor alone faces justice. She notes that her father -- whose body was never found and whom she still refers to as "missing" -- worked for the military regime, and so there might be people who believe he should have been punished.

"I don't think we need to be at that level," Brewer said. "It's like a revenge thing. . . . That's the thing we need to leave."