Influential Liberian senator and former warlord, Prince Johnson died on Thursday aged 72.

AFP quoted officials from Johnson’s party and the Senate as confirming his demise.

Johnson was a key figure in the 1989-2003 back-to-back civil wars in Liberia, gaining worldwide notoriety when he was seen sipping beer in a video as fighters loyal to him tortured then-president Samuel Doe to death in 1990.

“Yes, we lost him this morning. He passed away at Hope for Women (health centre),” Wilfred Bangura, a senior official in Prince Johnson’s Movement for Democracy and Reconstruction party, said.

Siaffa Jallah, deputy director of press at the Senate, confirmed that the deceased was the longest-serving senator.

The death of Doe was an early bloody episode that would plunge Liberia into two civil wars which killed some 250,000 people and ravaged the economy.

Prince Johnson, who hailed from the northern region of Nimba, later became a preacher in an evangelical church where he enjoyed wide popularity.

He was also a leading opponent of the creation of a tribunal that would try civil war-related crimes.

The Sun Nigeria