Sankoh dies before facing trial for war crimes

Foday Sankoh, the former leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement, has died in custody while awaiting trial for atrocities committed during the country's decade-long civil war. The UN-backed Special Court, set up try those who bore most responsibility for war crimes committed during the 1991-2001 conflict, said in a statement that Sankoh had died in Freetown's Choithram Hospital on Tuesday. He was 66 years old and had been seriously ill since he suffered a stroke in August last year. In recent months Sankoh had been confined to a wheelchair, incontinent, unable to feed himself and apparently unable to speak. A post mortem has been ordered. Both the main leaders of the RUF, which killed, raped and hacked the limbs off tens of thousands of civilians during the 1991-2001 civil war, are now dead. And one of their key collaborators is missing and suspected dead. Sam Bockarie, the RUF's military commander, who had also been indicted by the Special Court, was killed in Liberia in May. Bockarie was gunned down by forces loyal to President Charles Taylor, whom he had long served as a mercenary. The death of Sankoh and Bockarie and the disappearance and suspected death of Johnny Paul Koroma, the former leader of a military junta which tried to join forces with the RUF in 1997, have raised concerns over the truth-seeking process that is currently under way in Sierra Leone. History lecturer Ibrahim Abdullah, who wrote a book about the RUF called "Footpaths to Destruction," questioned whether the Special Court was still relevant. He said: "It is going to be problematic to get at what we would really like to know....I guess what we will actually be fed with what will be half truths. There will be a lot of gaps to fill up, so maybe we should redesign whatever truth instruments we have." The two institutions established to help Sierra Leone come to terms with its bloody past are the Special Court and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has been going round the country hearing testimony from war victims. Abdullah, questioned a continuing need for the Special Court, which has so far indicted about 15 people. They include President Charles Taylor of Liberia, who has been charged with supporting the RUF in its brutal campaign in return for smuggled diamonds, and Sam Hinga Norman, a former interior minister in Sierra Leone's present elected government. Hinga Norman led the Civil Defence Force militia movement that fought alongside the army against the RUF, but which has also been accused of widespread atrocities. Abdullah said: "Now, if the key guys who would testify, who could reveal certain things that were unknown to the public, are gone, then it becomes problematic in terms of (the Special Court's) continuation." Publisher Pios Foray expressed similar sentiments. He said: "We expected that with the institution of the Special Court, many of the dark hidden secrets that put us in 10 years of devastation and turmoil and 10 years of sliding into backwardness would have come to light." But he noted that with Sankoh and Bockarie dead and Koroma presumed dead, the court was no longer able to pursue the main instigators of the conflict. "Where do we go with the Special Court now?" Foray asked. "Who are we trying to prosecute?" Sankoh, a former corporal in the Sierra Leone army, received help from Libya to set up the RUF in the late 1980s. He had been in detention for three years prior to his death and was formally indicted by the Special Court for war crimes in March. Desmond de Silva, the Deputy Prosecutor, said in a statement: "He has been granted the peaceful end that he denied to so many others. His death will not stop the prosecution from leading evidence through other trials of his involvement in the most evil of deeds that have left a legacy of horror in the minds and memories of those who survive him." Information Minister Septimus Kai-Kai said the government regretted that Sankoh had died before facing his accusers. "People would have loved for him to go through the trial, to actually see what was the reason, the motivation, behind all the things that he has supposed to have done in this country," he said. "This blocks history," another government official told IRIN. "It would have been important even as this country struggles to consolidate peace and promote reconciliation that people hear his story." Sankoh served in the Armed Forces of Sierra Leone from 1956 to 1971 and subsequently worked as a photographer in the Kenema and Kailahun districts in the east of the country. He then moved to Libya where the RUF was founded and trained under his leadership. It was there that he first met Charles Taylor, who was receiving Libyan help to launch a rebellion in Liberia. Taylor took up arms in Liberia 1989 and the RUF launched its first attacks in Sierra Leone two years later. The movement financed itself by seizing the country's diamond mines and Taylor began to support it. Johnny Paul Koroma came to power at the head of a military junta which deposed elected President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in 1997 and invited the RUF to join him in Freetown. However Koroma's government was removed by the military intervention of Britain and several West African states and Kabbah was restored to power. Sankoh was captured and incarcerated in Nigeria until April 1999 when he was returned to Sierra Leone. There his movements were restricted until his arrest in May 2000 when more than 20 demonstrators were shot dead outside his house.