RIGHTS-SIERRA LEONE: Ex-President Begins Life In Prison

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Nov 6 1998 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s ex-President, Joseph Momoh this week began a new life in prison, after he was sentenced to 15 years for treason for supporting the previous military government.

“I was a victim of circumstances,” Momoh said, shortly before he was handed the sentence by Sierra Leone’s high court judge, Sydney Warne, on Thursday.

“As author and signatory of the 1991 constitution (which the current government is using), I cannot see myself conspiring or endeavouring to usurp Executive powers,” he said.

Momoh had spent nine months in detention at the Maximum Security Prison in the capital Freetown.

The former head of state, who ruled the West African country from 1985 to 1992, was one of the 21 civilians who were tried for supporting the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta which ruled Sierra Leone from May 1997 to February 1998.

During Thursday’s ruling, 15 civilians, including the AFRC’s Attorney General Ajibola Manley-Spaine, were found guilty and sentenced to death for treason. They have 21 days within which to appeal their convictions.

If a higher court overturns their appeal, all of them would be hanged to death.

Only captain Gibril Massaquoi, spokesman for the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) which teamed up with renegade junior officers of the Sierra Leone army in May 1997 to overthrow President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah’s government, was freed.

Massaquoi was found not guilty by the 12-member panel of jurors and was accordingly acquitted and discharged.

His acquittal has, however, enraged the civilian population in Freetown who are demanding his head. “Massaquoi is a murderer, a terrorist and demon. How could they let him off the hook? This is a traversy of justice,” fumed Aminata Rogers, a 39-year-old victim of the rebel war, whose limbs were severed by the insurgents with machete.

But Massaquoi, who was the rebel war strategist and the man alleged to have led a 1994 attack on the northwestern town of Kambia, abducting 100 school children, was in the Ivorian capital of Abidjan, when the 1997 coup took place and was not a key player in the AFRC regime.

“I think Massaquoi should be tried for crimes against humanity, he was the brain behind the RUF’s carnage in the countryside,” said Mustapha Sillah, a businessman in Freetown.

Sierra Leone’s newspapers also criticised Massaquoi’s release. “If Gibril Massaquoi can be freed, then why try corporal Foday Sankoh (the RUF leader who has been sentenced to death). Little wonder why some people prefer mob justice,” said the independent newspaper “Vision” in its editorial on Friday.

More than 40 civilians have so far been sentenced to death for their part in the 1997 coup. Last month 24 military officers were publicly executed by a firing squad, after they were found guilty of treason, by a military court.

The 24 were executed despite appeals for clemency by the international community. “The use of the death sentence penalty will not contribute to the process of reconciliation in Sierra Leone,” the London-based human rights group ‘Amnesty International’ said, shortly before the execution.

Britain also appealed to President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah to commute the death penalty to a prison sentence.

Kabbah, still enraged by the coup, fled into exile in neighbouring Guinea with his government and returned to Sierra Leone only after the junta was toppled by a Nigerian-led West African peacekeeping force “ECOMOG’ in February.

After they were overthrown, the remnants of the junta fled into the countryside where they are wagging a guerrilla war against the Kabbah government.

President Kabbah has offered amnesty to rebels who lay down their weapons. A demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants is currently underway, with funds provided by the World Bank, the United States and Britain.