Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson, a key player in the 1989-2003 back-to-back civil wars, died Thursday aged 72, officials from his party and the Senate told AFP.

Johnson, who was seen sipping beer in a video as fighters loyal to him tortured then-president Samuel Doe to death in 1990, was an influential senator.

“Senator Johnson was the longest-serving senator,” said Siaffa Jallah, deputy director of press at the Senate.

“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, told AFP.

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. (AFP)

•(FILES) Former Liberian warlord and senator Prince Johnson reads in his home in Monrovia on June 26, 2009. (Photo by GLENNA GORDON / AFP)