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/ 23 February 2008
A United Nations-backed court on Friday upheld the convictions of three former rebel leaders who were sentenced to half-century prison terms last year for rape, murder and other war crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s decade-long conflict. The three were leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council.
A United Nations-backed Sierra Leone court on Thursday issued its first sentences since the end of the West African nation’s bloody conflict, ordering three rebel leaders convicted of war crimes to prison for between 45 and 50 years each. The three men had been indicted in 2003 and their joint trial began in Freetown in 2005.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s defence team has some reading to do before his war-crimes trial begins — 32 000 pages of documents and witness statements compiled by prosecutors. That gives them plenty to do while officials work out where the trial will be held and where the accused warlord might be jailed if convicted.
United Nations peacekeepers escorted the captured former Liberian president Charles Taylor into jail on Wednesday at the Sierra Leone tribunal where he is wanted for trial on war-crimes charges. Taylor, handcuffed and looking dejected, was led behind a razor-wired gate into the holding penitentiary where nine other defendants in Sierra Leone’s brutal 1989-2002 civil war are held.