SIERRA LEONE: Clemency Calls Follow Execution Of Army Officers

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Oct 20 1998 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, has defied international appeals for clemency and went ahead and executed 24 army officers by firing squad for supporting the previous military government.

Kabbah, whose government was overthrown in May 1997 by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), pardoned only ten soldiers, who were also sentenced to death, by commuting their sentences to life imprisonment.

After the execution by firing squad on Monday, the president addressed the nation in which he said: “The consideration for carrying out the executions included the degree of their involvement and their participation in the planning, instigation and execution of the mutiny of May 25, 1997, their failure in their duty to prevent the mutiny itself and the level of human rights abuses and mayhem perpetrated or instigated against the people of this country”.

The president, whose administration was reinstated in March 1998, following the ousting of the AFRC, by a Nigerian-led West African Peace-Keeping Force ‘ECOMOG’, strongly defended the execution.

“These action (execution) has been taken not as an act of retribution, but rather to deter future military adventures from doing likewise and also protect the lives and property of Sierra Leoneans, by upholding the law,” he added.

But even before the execution, there had been plea for clemency from a number of countries and rights groups. Britain, which ruled Sierra Leone until independence in 1961, said the execution “would not auger well for proper reconciliation” in the country.

“The use of the death penalty will not contribute to the process of reconciliation in Sierra Leone,” the London-based human rights organisation Amnesty International said in a statement, made available to IPS last week.

It appealed to Kabbah to overturn the ruling.

The only local organisation that opposed the execution, besides relatives and friends of the executed officers, is a Freetown- based non-governmental organisation (NGO), called Prison Watch.

Paul Allen, the organisation’s secretary general, expressed grave concern over the carrying our of the death sentences.

“We had written a letter to President Kabbah urging him to exercise mercy and commute the sentences, but it would appear our pleas fell on deaf ears,” Allen told IPS on Tuesday.

Most Sierra Leoneans have welcomed the execution. “Here I am today without limbs. My two wrists were severed by AFRC troops with machete, my house was razed to the ground and four members of my family hacked to death right in my presence,” claimed Saur Pessima, from the eastern mining district of Kono.

“I think it was proper of them to pay with their lives,” he said.

Another victim, Mariama Kamara from the northern district of Bombali, who also lost a limb, said: “I saw AFRC troops burning alive children and women and, in one particular instance, five under-five kids were thrown into hot boiling water while their mothers were made to stand-by and watch”.

President Kabbah Monday renewed his offer of amnesty to the remnants of the AFRC soldiers. is being sponsored by the donor community and supervised by ECOMOG and UN military observers.