Case file · Folklore / legend
'General Butt Naked' confesses
In January 2008 Joshua Milton Blahyi, known as General Butt Naked in Liberia's civil war, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he had led fighters into battle naked, believing it made them invulnerable, and had taken part in ritual killings.
2008 CE · 6.30, -10.80 · status: account
The account
He said he had made sacrifices to a spirit before battle. He later became an evangelical preacher. His estimate of 20,000 deaths caused by his forces is unverified.
The sceptical view
His confession was self-dramatising and served a conversion story; it remains an important record of how magic shaped wartime violence.