Kouyate retracts, says Sankoh to remain in Freetown

The executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Lansana Kouyate, apologised on Tuesday for an error in announcing that the detained Sierra Leonean rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, would be moved to another country, the BBC reported.

West African leaders meeting at the weekend in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, were widely reported as having agreed that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader would be taken to a safer country. The reports provoked angry demonstrations in Freetown by civilians demanding that Sankoh stand trial in Sierra Leone, the BBC reported.

However, Sierra Leone’s information minister, Julius Spencer, told the BBC on Tuesday that President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah had not signed the communique “nor has Guinea as far as I know”. Spencer added that Kabbah told Kouyate on Monday that no decision had been made on Sankoh’s departure.

Following Kouyate’s apology, the Liberian Information Minister, Joe Mulbah, told IRIN he was disappointed “at the news”. He had earlier in the day described the reported decision by ECOWAS to move Sankoh as a “welcome gesture”. as a Sankoh trial in Sierra Leone would “exacerbate the war”.

Before leaving Monrovia on Saturday for the ECOWAS summit in Nigeria, Liberian President Charles Taylor, a former rebel leader with historical ties to RUF, had described as “stupidity” the decision to put Sankoh on trial when his fighters had not demobilised and disarmed, the Liberian News Agency (LINA) reported.

Mulbah said Liberia wanted peace and reconciliation as “war in Sierra Leone means war in Liberia”. He said government intelligence reports indicated that Liberian dissidents were fighting alongside Sierra Leone’s pro-government militia forces and that this was a “danger to Liberia’s security”.