POLITICS-SIERRA LEONE: Five Journalists Sentenced To Death

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Aug 26 1998 (IPS) - The decision by a Sierra Leonean court to sentence 16 people, including five journalists, to death by hanging for collaborating with the country’s ousted military regime, has been welcomed here.

“This was what we’d been waiting for. Justice has been done at last”, said Michael Kombay, an auto electrician here.

“The government should ensure that the agents and functionaries of that brutal regime are all brought to book”, he told IPS on Wednesday.

Mustapha Rogers, a bank official here, echoed similar sentiment. “May their souls rest in hell for all the pain they caused the people of Sierra Leone”.

The 16, who were found guilty by a 12-member jury on Monday, had their sentences read to them on Tuesday by justice Edmund Cowan, the presiding judge.

Handing down the sentence, Cowan told each of the prisoners: “You will be taken from here to a place of maximum security to be hanged by the neck until you die. May your soul rest in peace”.

They were immediately whisked off by police and West African Peacekeeping force ‘ECOMOG’ to Freetown’s maximum security prison.

Cowan allowed the defendants 21 days to appeal the sentences.

The convicted journalists are former presenter on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) African Service, Hilton Fyle, the former head of state radio Gipu George, newspaper editor Ibrahim Kargbo, and radio journalists Dennis Smith and Olivia Mensah.

Fyle, who owned a private FM radio station here, is alleged to have allowed it to become a mouthpiece for the military government.

The condemned also include a number of civilians who joined the military. Prominent among them are opposition legislator, Victor Foh, the former governor of the central bank, Christian Kargbo and junta spokesman Allieu Kamara.

Sixty-eight former army officers and civilian collaborators, including former president Joseph Momoh, are also standing trial here.

The detained army officers are believed to be the brains behind the May 25, 1997 coup, that overthrew the 14-month old civilian government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah.

Joseph Kamara, a lecturer at the University of Sierra Leone, said Tuesday’s sentence should serve as a lesson to potential coup makers. “I am sure the retrogressive coup syndrome will subside in this country and civilians who hastily jump on the military’s bandwagon will in future think twice”, he said.

Sierra Leoneans said they had witnessed, under the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), that emerged after the 1997 coup, some of the worst atrocities in the country’s recent history. There was massive looting, repeated murders and the burning of the national treasury, bank of Sierra Leone and residential homes of several top government officials, including that of the then ousted president, Kabbah.

Sanity returned only in February after the Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops toppled the junta and reinstated Kabbah.

The restoration of the civilian government saw a series of mob actions against former military officers and their civilian collaborators. At least a dozen people were burned alive by irate mobs, before the authorities outlawed the crude form of justice.

Unconfirmed reports here Wednesday put the number of alleged civilian collaborators behind bars at over 500, but the government is keeping a tight lip on the figure.