MONROVIA, Sept. 16 -- Whatever the jury in Criminal Court "C" ultimately decides about Ambassador Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah's guilt or innocence, the trial now in its 27th day has already surfaced something that may outlast the verdict, evidence that Liberia's disaster relief apparatus may not have known where its own rice went, who received it, or whether it arrived at all.

By Willie Tokpah

That question - not Kemayah's individual culpability, but the system's basic functionality - has quietly become the trial's second, unofficial subject.

A Community That Says the Rice Never Came

Perhaps the most telling testimony so far came not from an official or an investigator, but from the chairman of the Seven Blocks of Lakpazee Community, des...