Liberia: Man arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community to cause ebola-like symptoms

[Emily]

http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/breaking-formaldeyde-water-allegedly-causing-ebola-symptoms

BREAKING: Formaldeyde in Water Allegedly Causing Ebola-like Symptoms
Sat, 08/02/2014 - 13:56 admin
By:
Observer Staff

A man in Schieffelin, a community located in Margibi County on the Robertsfield Highway, has been arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community.

Reports say around 10 a.m., he approached the well with powder in a bottle. Mobbed by the community, he confessed that he had been paid to put formaldeyde into the well, and that he was not the only one. He reportedly told community dwellers, ?We are many.? There are are agents in Harbel, Dolostown, Cotton Tree and other communities around the ountry, he said.

State radio, ELBC, reports that least 10 people in the Dolostown community have died after drinking water from poisoned wells.

The man also alleged that some water companies, particularly those bagging mineral water to sell, are also involved. The poison, he said, produces Ebola-like symptoms and subsequently kills people...

 

[Lizw]

Re: Liberia: Man arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community to cause ebola-like symptoms

This might explain why some people are showing symptoms but coming up negative on tests. But it also sounds a bit on the paranoid side too.

 

[Emily]

Re: Liberia: Man arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community to cause ebola-like symptoms

http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/lnp-denies-well-poisoning-stories

LNP Denies Well Poisoning Stories
Fri, 08/08/2014 - 00:30 admin
By:
Alvin Worzi

The spokesman for the Liberia National Police (LNP), Sam Collins, has described reports of well poisoning in communities across the country as ?false, misleading and lacking in substance?.

Speaking Wednesday to the Daily Observer on Center Street, the police spokesman said, the LNP was running out of patience with people demonstrating and throwing stones at LNP officers.

According to him, the police officers were open to the public providing evidence of individuals engaged in poisoning wells to destroy peaceful citizens? lives.

He condemned the action by residents of communities who were using stones to solve the problem and called on them to desist from throwing stones as a way of engaging the police and alleged criminals.

...

He disclosed that the LNP was doing a water test in the Schieffelin community where a sample of the water will be taken to the University of Liberia campus for the testing. The public will be provided with the results. But he insisted that LNP has not seen any substance in the allegations as insinuated by the public.

Those in custody of the police were only being protected by the LNP, as communities were determined to mob them. Only one person so far was undergoing police investigation, he said.

The Observer, however, obtained photos of the alleged perpetrator arrested in Schieffelin, the dead dog on which the poison was allegedly tested and the paraphernalia he is said to have used.

On Tuesday, August 5th, the Observer reported another story in which community residents said that around 4 a.m. Monday morning, they saw two armed men approach their well. The men allegedly made a small opening in the side of the well covering and used a syringe to insert a substance into the well.

Apparently, across the country, the modus operandi is uniformed -- the use of syringes and chemicals...

 

[Emily]

Re: Liberia: Man arrested for attempting to put formaldehyde into a well used by the community to cause ebola-like symptoms

http://www.liberianobserver.com/editorials/who-poisoning-our-wells

Who Is Poisoning Our Wells?
Wed, 08/06/2014 - 06:54 admin

Early Sunday morning people in the capital, Monrovia, awoke to the terrible news that a certain band of individuals were going around spilling formaldehyde in wells in the general vicinity, beginning in the Roberts International Highway area in Margibi County.

There are those who believe it is not formaldehyde but some other highly poisonous substance being used to contaminate the wells.

Early Monday morning there was commotion at the New Georgia Junction on Somalia Drive when a man or group of men was spotted putting unknown substances in wells with syringes.

The first story was immediately reported by the state-run Radio ELBC.

When the Daily Observer reporting team went to Zone 8 near ELWA Hospital junction, they were told to proceed to police operations further up the Robertsfield Highway, because the people poisoning the wells had first been spotted in the Margibi area not far from the Roberts International Airport (RIA).

Indeed the Daily Observer web site carried early Monday the photograph of a man who had been arrested for allegedly putting substances into wells in the Margibi area.

The Observer web site also reported that 10 persons had died in Dolo?s Town along the Robertsfield Highway; and later that another 20 or more people had perished after eating food at a repast in the town. The site carried photographs of the incident, including that of a dead dog which had also been poisoned.

But there were two developments that, in the midst of all this, created serious suspicion: ELBC, which had first broken the story, back-tracked on it, saying that it was a ?mere rumor.? The suspicion intensified when it was later learned that the National Traditional Council of Chiefs had gotten involved in the investigation, taking it over from the police. Now for Heaven?s sake, what do traditional chiefs have to do with a criminal investigation? This very serious and alarming matter should be in the hands of professionally trained criminal investigators working for the Criminal Investigation Division (CID), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and, given the reports of so many dead, the entire Joint Security...