POLITICS-SIERRA LEONE: Detained Dissident A Factor In Peace Talks

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, May 10 2001 (IPS) - Detained rebel leader, Foday Sankoh is becoming a major factor in the search for peace in the small West African nation of Sierra Leone.

Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), was arrested and detained a few days after the killing last year of 22 unarmed demonstrators by RUF combatants.

The demonstrators — numbering about 10,000 — had marched on the premises of the rebel leader in western Freetown on May 8, 2000 to register their protest over the slow pace of the peace process and also to urge the RUF to release 500 UN peacekeepers abducted by the rebel movement.

Sankoh is being detained, along with dozens of his supporters, in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.

Sankoh’s name cropped up after the conclusion of a cease-fire review meeting between the government and RUF delegations in the Nigerian capital of Abuja last week.

At the meeting, the rebel delegation led by its political and peace council chairperson Omrie Golley requested the release of its detained personnel “in the light of the need for confidence- building measures.”

Golley told journalists that “Foday Sankoh still remains substantive chairman of the RUF political party…and we must have him and supporters released so as to move the peace process forward.”

The government delegation declared its intention to consider the request. However, on Tuesday, the Sierra Leonean envoy to the United Nations in New York, Allieu Kanu announced an about-turn by the Freetown government. “This is not an issue of whether or not to release Foday Sankoh; that is not the government’s priority,” he said.

Kanu added that as far as the matter of Sankoh was concerned, it’s a question of how and when a Special Criminal Court would be set up to try him, and others, bearing the greatest responsibility for crimes committed during the course of the country’s ten-year conflict.

“The government is not thinking of releasing Sankoh at all,” Kanu said in Tuesday’s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) interview, ending speculation about the rebel leader’s immediate future. The RUF is yet to react to the government’s latest position.

Since the shooting incident, the Sierra Leone’s peace process has been limping on one leg with the rebels allowing UN peacekeepers to deploy in some of their territory, while themselves refusing to disarm and demobilise.

As the controversy continues, it appears that the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) is being sucked into the fray.

In a BBC interview on Wednesday, Oluyemi Adeniji, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative said, “There is need to release the more than 100 RUF personnel in detention,” adding that “even the government of Sierra Leone may not want to see them permanently detained in the interest of peace.”

Adeniji’s comments have not gone down well with many in Freetown. They argue that any release of the hardcore RUF detainees may not be in the best interest of the state and could tear apart the faltering peace process.

Commented Isata Bockarie, a civil servant: “It will be a sad mistake to release Foday Sankoh and his gang of killers. I think that Ambassador Adeniji is missing the point. We can do without Foday Sankoh in the peace process.”

Another Freetown resident, Jonathan Sandy lamented: “I thought Sankoh was no longer a factor in the crisis because he was replaced months ago by General Issa Sesay. Wasn’t Sankoh the stumbling block to the peace process? He was responsible for last year’s killings of peaceful demonstrators and so he must remain in jail.”

Although the rebels claim that Sankoh is being held by British forces in Sierra Leone, the fact is that the rebel leader is in detention at the government’s maximum-security prison in Freetown. His health is said to be deteriorating and has not been allowed visits from his relatives and members of the public.

Sankoh, a cashiered ex-army corporal shot to the limelight in March 1991 when he launched an armed rebellion from across the Liberian border with his RUF movement. His war was conducted on terror and intimidation of civilians.

More than 50,000 people have been killed during the course of fighting, with a ghastly campaign of brutally cutting off the limbs of civilians including women and babies. Today, there are more than 3,000 amputee survivors of the war with their hands, legs, tongues and ears among other body parts slashed off with the use of crude implements like machete by rebel forces.

The war also has forced about a quarter of the country’s 4.5 million people into exile in neighbouring countries where they live as refugees.

Meanwhile, the rebels and the government are due to meet in Freetown later this month under the auspices of the UN Mission to find ways of expediting the disarmament process.