What to Know About Security Official Peter Bon Jallah’s Rape Case and Jail Sentence

Peter Bon Jallah was immediately dismissed as Special Assistant to the National Security Agency (NSA), Director, Maj. Gen. Prince C. Johnson, after he was arrested on rape charges in January of this year.

Jallah made his first appearance on the charges Monday, January 13, at the Monrovia City Court.

Jallah, 63,  stood trial on charges bordering on gang rape, statutory rape and kidnapping, according to the police charge sheet.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges when his charges were read to him in court.

Despite the not guilty plea, Jallah was remanded to Monrovia Central Prison to wait until the commencement of his trial on July 13. The charges against Jallah are non-bailable offenses.

According to the indictment, the incident occurred on separate dates: November 29, 2025, December 24, 2025, and January 1 to 3, 2026, in the Air Field, Sinkor community in Monrovia.

Defendant Jallah’s indictment took over a month while he was incarcerated at the Central Prison.

His trial began when the indictment was returned by the Montserrado County Grand Jury in its February 2026 term.

According to the indictment returned by the Montserrado County Grand Jury in its February 2026 term, the abuse began in late 2025. Prosecutors alleged that on November 29 and December 24, 2025, Jallah lured the victim to his residence and sexually abused him there.

The indictment said the victim and Peter lived in the same Airfield, Sinkor Sharks community, where the victim often rendered domestic services to the defendant, such as washing cars, sweeping the yard, and washing the floor, and defendant Jallah usually compensated him with money for his services.

On January 1, 2025, New Year's Day, the victim participated in a football league on the Kpelle Town Football Field, and after the game, while on his way, he saw defendant Jallah in front of his fence, and the defendant asked him (A. H. B. A.) why he didn't ask defendant Jallah to buy a football boot for him, and he told the defendant that he forgot. 

The defendant told the victim to go take a bath and come back to his (defendant) house so that the defendant could take him out to buy a pair of boots for him. 

According to the indictment, the victim went home, took his bath, came back, entered the defendant's fence, and waited for defendant Jallah to take his bath so the both of them could leave. 

The indictment stated that after the defendant took a bath, the both of them got into the defendant's car, and the defendant took him to an unknown building within the vicinity of Camp Johnson Road at about 3:00 P.M. on January 1, 2026, where he was gang-raped by the defendant and two unidentified male adults. 

Instead of a shopping trip, the indictment alleges, the boy was taken to a building in the Camp Johnson Road area. He was held there for three days, given noodles that made him dizzy, and abused repeatedly. Prosecutors alleged that two unidentified men took part. 

On the night of January 3, the indictment says, the boy was hidden in the back of Jallah’s vehicle and left on the roadside on 15th Street, Sinkor. Private security guards found him and alerted his family. His mother and relatives took him to the John F. Kennedy Medical Center for examination.

During the trial, the state’s strongest scientific evidence came from Pascal Bavugirije of the Rwanda Forensic Institute, which analyzed exhibits after Liberia sent them abroad. He testified that DNA profiles from four clothing exhibits matched Jallah’s reference sample. Material collected from the alleged scene produced a mixed profile from unknown people that matched neither Jallah nor the boy.

The boy testified in August that he was assaulted three times, and the court admitted his police statement over defense objections. Investigators also told the court that phone records placed Jallah near one of the alleged scenes, contradicting the account that he had no contact with the boy.

According to the prosecution, the abuse began in late 2025. Prosecutors alleged that on November 29 and December 24, 2025, Jallah lured the boy to his residence and sexually abused him there.

On September 28, Judge Wesseh Aphonsus Wesseh Sr. suspended the trial Monday pending a ruling on the defense motion for judgment of acquittal and ordered prosecutors to file a written resistance by noon Tuesday. Prosecutors had asked for more time, saying the defense raised several issues that required detailed consideration.

The motion was argued on the 42nd day of jury sitting in the August Term of the First Judicial Circuit Criminal Assizes ‘E’. The defense relied on Sections 2.1 and 20.10 of the Criminal Procedure Law, arguing that Jallah is presumed innocent and that the court may enter a judgment of acquittal where the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.

Defense lawyers said other conditions the alleged victim described at the compound, including the availability of fresh water, were also not observed during the inspection.

The defense also challenged where the alleged offenses took place. According to the court record, the alleged victim testified that Jallah assaulted him twice in Jallah’s bedroom and once in a four-story building on Camp Johnson Road. Defense counsel said the police charge sheet placed one alleged incident in Jallah’s bedroom and another in his daughter’s room, and that the alleged victim later testified he was never assaulted in the daughter’s room. Counsel called that a material variance between the charge sheet and the testimony.

On the Camp Johnson Road allegation, the defense said police took the alleged victim to the area twice, and he could not identify the building. The court did not include that location in the Sept. 24 inspection, and the defense has asked that the alleged victim’s earlier description of it be removed from the record.

The defense also attacked the medical evidence. Counsel cited testimony from a nurse who examined the alleged victim at JFK Medical Center, saying the nurse told the jury the findings could have resulted from rape or another form of trauma and that the medical report reached no definitive conclusion that the alleged victim had been raped.

Defense counsel further argued that DNA analysis of forensic experts from Rwanda conducted on clothing collected from the alleged crime scene did not, by itself, establish penetration.

Again, on October 27, the defense filed a motion, signed by Counsellor G. Wiefueh Alfred Sayeh of the Law Offices of Sayeh & Sayeh, making four main claims.

1. The kidnapping conviction contradicts the gang rape acquittal. The defense argues that the kidnapping charge rests on the alleged three-day confinement off Camp Johnson Road, the same episode at the heart of the gang rape charge. If the court found too little evidence that the gang rape happened there, the motion says, it cannot find that the boy was held there. It describes the conviction as “contrary to the weight of the evidence.”

2. The court lacked jurisdiction over kidnapping. Criminal Court “E” is Liberia’s specialized court for sexual offenses. The motion argues it has no jurisdiction over kidnapping as a separate crime. This is a purely legal question, and if the judge or a higher court agrees, it could void that conviction regardless of the evidence.

3. Penetration was never proven. Under Liberia’s rape statute, penetration is an essential element. The defense points to three pieces of testimony:

* A JFK Medical Center doctor, called by the defense, testified that an examination under anesthesia shortly after the boy’s January rescue found no evidence of trauma. The hospital’s operative record lists the post-procedure diagnosis as “normal findings.” The motion says the prosecution offered no rebuttal.

* The Rwandan forensic examiner testified that DNA analysis cannot establish guilt or innocence and that his report did not show whether penetration occurred.

* A nurse examiner from the hospital’s One Stop Center for survivors of sexual violence, a prosecution witness, testified that she could not say the boy was not raped, adding that she was there only to report what she saw. The defense argues that statement does not prove rape and creates doubt that must favor the accused.

The motion goes further, accusing the judge of attributing the words “penetration” and “blunt object” to the nurse’s testimony when, it says, no witness used them.

1. The defendant did not get a fair trial. The motion alleges the judge remarked in open court that the prosecution was “asking weak questions.” It also says that after reviewing the defense’s Orange phone records, the judge on his own initiative subpoenaed Jallah’s records from a second carrier, Lonestar Cell MTN, over a defense objection that the court could not introduce evidence on the state’s behalf.

According to the written verdict, the prosecution called 13 regular witnesses and six rebuttal witnesses. The defense called eight witnesses, including Jallah, plus three subpoenaed witnesses from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the mobile operator Orange Liberia and the John F. Kennedy Medical Center.

The case was first filed before Criminal Assizes Court “A” before being transferred to Court “E.” Court “E” is Liberia’s specialized court for sexual and gender-based violence. Jallah was arraigned on June 18, 2026, pleaded not guilty, and chose a bench trial. 

A bench trial means the judge serves as the jury and decides the fate of the defendant.

The trial then stalled. The court denied the prosecution’s motion for a change of venue. Prosecutors went to the Supreme Court seeking a writ of certiorari, which the Justice in Chambers also denied, and the case was ordered to proceed. It stalled again when the court’s regular term expired before the court could take evidence. Hearings finally began on August 5 under a reassigned judge.

When Judge Wesseh Alphonsus Wesseh Sr. delivered his verdict on Friday, October 23, he framed the case around three questions: whether the evidence supported a conviction for gang rape, for statutory rape, and for kidnapping. He answered no to the first and yes to the other two.

Judge Wesseh ruled that the prosecution had presented sufficient evidence to establish Jallah’s guilt on the statutory rape and kidnapping charges but failed to establish sufficient grounds to convict him of gang rape.

In its verdict, the court stated that it had reviewed the evidence presented by both parties and considered the legal arguments before determining the three central issues in the case.

On the gang rape charge, the court answered in the negative the question of whether the prosecution’s evidence provided sufficient grounds for conviction.

“Hence, this court finds Defendant Peter Bon Jallah ‘NOT GUILTY’ of the Crime of Gang Rape; and he is hereby acquitted of the Crime of Gang Rape,” the verdict stated.

Unfortunately, the court’s ruling does not explain why Jallah was acquitted of gang rape. The two men named alongside him in the indictment were never identified, never arrested, and never brought before the court. Jallah was severed from them and tried alone.

Gang rape, by definition, requires proof that more than one person took part. With the alleged accomplices still unknown, the prosecution may simply have been unable to prove their involvement to the court’s satisfaction. That is an inference, not a finding. The court has not yet said why. Each of the three findings ends with the same note: “legal citations are pending.”

The court in its verdict ordered Jallah remanded to the Monrovia Central Prison pending the submission of a pre-sentence and behavioral report by the Bureau of Probation Services at the Ministry of Justice, which was to guide the court in determining his sentence.

After the verdict, on Tuesday, October 27, at 11:12 a.m., Jallah’s lawyers filed a motion for a new trial at Criminal Court “E” in Monrovia. The filing, received by Acting Clerk of Court Abraham Richards, asks the judge to set aside his own verdict.

The motion was the first formal test of a ruling that, by the court’s own record, states its conclusions on each charge without detailing how it weighed every witness and exhibit. That gap is what the defense is trying to exploit.

Judge Wesseh denied the motion, taking the case to sentencing after the pre-sentence and behavioral report by the Bureau of Probation Services at the Ministry of Justice was submitted. The defense announced an appeal to the Supreme Court of Liberia, and the arguments in this motion offer a preview of that appeal.

Conclusion: Until the Supreme Court of Liberia decides on the announced appeal by the defense, Peter Bon Jalllah remains incarcerated behind bars at the Central Prison.