Bucks man who feds say once served as bodyguard to ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor pleads guilty to lying on U.S. immigration papers

A man prosecutors say once identified himself as a former bodyguard to ex-Liberian president and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor admitted in court Monday that he used his younger brother’s identity to gain legal residency in the United States and then later apply for citizenship.

Isiah Kangar, who arrived in the United States in 2010 under a visa he obtained in his brother’s name, told a federal judge that he’d that assumed identity after being denied a request for asylum in South Africa years before. In court filings, prosecutors alleged his asylum bid had been rejected because of his ties to Taylor and his admission he allegedly made that in that role he’d committed killings on behalf of the government.

But under the terms of the agreement he cemented with the government Monday, Kangar, 51, of Bristol, had not been charged with and was not required to admit to any specifics about his past in Liberia. Instead, he admitted only to counts tied to his deception of U.S. immigration authorities.

“It’s my decision. My decision alone,” Kangar told U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney, during a brief hearing at which he pleaded guilty to counts including conspiracy, visa fraud, and unlawful procurement of U.S. citizenship.

He now faces up to 10 years in prison on the most serious count at a sentencing scheduled for March. Kangar also agreed Monday to be voluntarily deported to Liberia after he serves his prison term.

Kangar’s admission comes as U.S. authorities in Philadelphia have focused attention in recent years in probing the backgrounds of the region’s sizable community of Liberian refugees, many of of whom arrived in the United States fleeing violence that erupted during the West African nation’s brutal back-to-back civil wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. More than 200,000 civilians died during those conflicts amid numerous documented atrocities committed by combatants on all sides.

Since then, federal prosecutors have charged at least four Liberian nationals residing outside Philadelphia with lying to U.S. immigration authorities about their conduct during the conflicts. Until the first of those prosecutions, no one had been held criminally responsible for the numerous documented war crimes committed during the brutal Liberian conflicts.

Though Taylor was charged by an international court and convicted of war crimes in 2011, that case involved his actions during a different civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. He is serving a 50-year prison term in England.

Then, in 2018, Mohammed “Jungle Jabbah”Jabateh, 57, of East Lansdowne, was sentenced to three decades in prison for lying on green card applications about the role he played in dozens of acts of murder, rape, enslavement and cannibalism that he oversaw as a warlord during the fighting. That same year, a jury convicted Jucontee Thomas Woewiyu, of Collingdale -- a former spokesperson and defense minister for Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia -- of similar immigration crimes. He died in 2020 before he could be sentenced.

Trials against two other figures accused of hiding their wartime past are scheduled for next year.

Unlike in those earlier prosecutions, government lawyers did not accuse Kangar of any wartime misconduct and, despite what they maintain he said on his South African asylum application, they did not attempt to turn his case into an exhaustive reexamination of his wartime activities. They only referenced his alleged past association with Taylor in court filings surrounding evidence they’d hoped to present had he taken his case to trial.

Instead, they focused narrowly on Kangar’s decision to adopt his brother’s identity to gain permission to come to the United States. Kangar first applied for a visa to come to America under his brother’s name in 2009, after that failed South African asylum bid, he told the judge Monday.

His deception proved successful. And it was only after he applied to become a citizen three years later that agents with Homeland Security Investigations discovered that Kangar was not who he was pretending to be.

In court Monday, Kangar acknowledged falsely using his brother’s name and admitted maintaining a Facebook profile under his false identity.

Before accepting the plea, Kearney, the judge, asked Kangar whether — unlike in his earlier interactions with the U.S. government — this time he had been entirely forthcoming.

“Everything,” Kangar said, describing the admissions he made moments earlier, “was the truth.”