U.S. soldier reunited with family that fled Liberia
Published: September 5, 2003
After years of separation, a Liberian national serving in the U.S. Army has been reunited with his family, who arrived at Dover Air Force Base after fleeing the war-ravaged country, officials said Friday.
Pvt. Joseph Conto’s wife, two children and sister arrived Thursday night at the Dover base aboard a military aircraft. They were detained briefly by immigration officials for questioning but were later released, according to Jeff Kocher, supervisory special agent for the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Philadelphia.
Conto’s relatives, whom he had not seen in more than five years, traveled under tourist visas quickly arranged by U.S. embassy officials in Monrovia, where fighting since June killed more than 1,000 civilians.
Conto, a combat engineer with the 1st Calvary Division stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, had not seen his wife and children since he left Monrovia for the United States in 1997.
He was reunited with his family at his mother’s house in Baltimore, said his company commander, Capt. Matthew McCulley.
McCulley said Conto, who joined the Army last year and has applied for U.S. citizenship, will stay with his family in Baltimore for a few days and eventually bring them back to Fort Hood.
“We’ve been able to get them on-post housing,” McCulley said. “A lot of people donated beds and things like that. We’ve been able to furnish his house pretty well.”
The family’s reunion came after a weeks-long odyssey that began with a rebel attack in July on Liberia’s capital, U.S. Embassy official Robert Ferguson said Friday.
The second of three waves of rebel attacks on the capital overran the neighborhood of Conto’s family in Monrovia in early July. Mortar fire destroyed their house, killing Conto’s father and brother.
Embassy officials were able to rescue other family members, housing them in the diplomatic compound beginning in mid-July.
Over the past several weeks, officials obtained the family’s clothes, money, Liberian passports and tourist visas to the United States, Ferguson said.
They were sent Tuesday by military aircraft to an air base at Rota, Spain, then on to Dover.
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