MONROVIA: The US government has frozen the assets in the United States of Monrovia’s mayor, accusing him of violence against political opponents, rights violations and corruption, according to the embassy in Liberia’s capital.

Jefferson Koijee ordered paramilitary-type organisations linked to his party, and over which he has control, to take brutal action against demonstrations by opponents, government critics or anti-rape activists between 2018 and 2022, the US Treasury Department said.

Koijee, a senior official of the Congress for Democratic Change, the party of the recently defeated incumbent president George Weah, is “responsible for, complicit in, or directly or indirectly involved in serious human rights violations”, the Treasury said in a statement seen on the US embassy in Monrovia’s website on Saturday.