OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Freetown | Friday 7.30pm.
FODAY Sankoh, the rebel leader who waged war against four Sierra Leonean governments and described himself as a “man of peace”, was sentenced to death on treason and murder charges in Freetown High Court on Friday.
The leader of the Revolutionary United Front launched his rebellion in March 1991, after training and indoctrination in Libya. He unleashed a civil war that would eventually kill more than 10,000 Sierra Leoneans and force nearly half the country’s population of 4.5 million into exile.
His so-called jungle army of bare-foot conscripts, child soldiers and army deserters razed villages and murdered, raped, and mutilated civilians. His own identity has always evoked mystery and his very existence was in question until he emerged from his jungle base in eastern Sierra Leone in May 1996.
In 1997 when the junta led by Johnny Paul Koroma toppled the elected government, Sankoh, who was in detention in Nigeria at the time, appealed to his troops in a radio message to support the junta.
Close members of Sankoh’s RUF coterie collaborated with the junta and took positions within the power structure it created. The junta was ousted in May this year by the Nigerian-led West African intervention force Ecomog.
The junta, holed up in Freetown, refused to lay down arms unless Sankoh was freed. Ecomog therefore mopped up Freetown by force.
During his trial Sankoh pleaded not guilty, saying the peace accord signed in Abidjan granted him amnesty. He was obliged to plead his own defence after the Sierra Leonean Bar Association refused to take up his case for fear of reprisals.
Sankoh has appealed the ruling and asked the government to provide him with a lawyer.
There is little likelihood of clemency. On Monday 24 soldiers and officers associated with the junta were executed by firing squad.