IRIN Focus on rebel leaders’ return home

Sierra Leonean civil society leaders on Monday welcomed the return to Freetown of Revolutionary United Front(RUF)leader Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma, head of the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) junta. The two men flew in from Monrovia on Sunday, nearly three months after the RUF and the government signed a peace accord in Lome. “Their return is long overdue,” Zainab Bangura, coordinator for the non-governmental Campaign for Good Governance, told IRIN. “They contributed to the destruction of our country. They must now help us rebuild it.” President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared in a statement that Sunday was “indeed a great day for the people of Sierra Leone”. He said: “By this symbolic occasion we have demonstrated to our people that the war is over.” Although the return of Sankoh and Koroma is viewed by some as the only guarantee for peace after a previous accord signed in 1996 failed to stop the rebel war that started in 1991, it caused little jubilation in Freetown. Civil society representatives told IRIN that ordinary people had given Kabbah, the country’s elected president, red-carpet treatment when he returned to Freetown from Conakry in March 1998, nine months after being overthrown by the AFRC. However, they gave Sankoh and Koroma a far more muted reception. Sankoh, Koroma call for reconciliation At a joint press conference in Freetown on Sunday, Sankoh and Koroma apologised for their past deeds. “We stand before you today to ask for forgiveness in the spirit of reconciliation across this country,” Sankoh said in a prepared statement. “Let bygones be bygones,” Koroma said, adding: “If we don’t forgive one another we cannot implement the peace accord.” Koroma also called on his supporters in control of diamond-bearing areas to cease illicit mining, widely believed to be the main cause of the prolonged conflict. Civil society leaders told IRIN the two leaders’ remorse had to be genuine and consistent to be taken seriously by Sierra Leoneans. “They need to convince the population that they have the sincerity, ideas, wherewithal and commitment to translate their pious ideology into concrete action which will bring about meaningful benefits at grass-roots level in our own society,” Rev. Crispin Cole, General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of Sierra Leone (EFSL), told IRIN. Foreign Minister Sama S. Banya said at the UN General Assembly last week that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was provided for in the peace agreement to ensure accountability. He said it might need to be backed by an international body of inquiry as proposed by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. “For the average Sierra Leonean, the peace agreement was a bitter pill to swallow, but an essential pill to end the atrocities in the country,” Banya said. New challenges A local leader told IRIN he was astonished that Sankoh could deny the RUF was holding thousands of civilians while asking Sierra Leoneans for forgiveness for atrocities committed against them. “The question is irrelevant, all lies,” Sankoh had said in response to a comment at the news conference that all civilian abductees should be released. “We, the Revolutionary United Front, do not abduct people, we rescue them,” he reportedly said. In a report released last week UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the RUF/AFRC were believed to be holding several thousand civilians, including at least 3,000 children reported missing after the attack on Freetown in January. The future of former soldiers who had backed the AFRC is another key issue. A source in Monrovia told IRIN Koroma said on Sunday that an addendum to the Lome accord, allegedly signed by Vice President Joe Demby, guaranteed his men full reintegration into the army and back pay for the period they spent in the bush. Presidential spokesman Septimus Kaikai told IRIN he was unaware of the existence of this addendum. However, Kabbah did agree to a request by Koroma for the border between Sierra Leone and Liberia to be opened, Kaikai said.