Sierra Leone:Sierra Leone's special war crimes court handed down its first verdicts yesterday, finding three leaders of a militia guilty of war crimes that included killing, raping and mutilating civilians.
The verdicts against Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu stem from charges related to Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war. The charges also target former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who is facing a separate trial in The Hague.
The three were found guilty of forcing children aged under 15 to fight, the first time an international tribunal has ruled on the recruitment of child soldiers.
"These convictions are a groundbreaking step toward ending impunity for commanders who exploit hundreds of thousands of children as soldiers in conflicts worldwide," said US-based Human Rights Watch.
The three men were commanders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), former government soldiers who sided with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels during the conflict that devastated the former British colony.
The United Nations-backed tribunal found them guilty on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity which covered terrorising the civilian population, unlawful killings, rape, abductions, forced labour and looting.
The men were found not guilty on two counts of sexual violence and one count of physical violence. They are due to be sentenced on July 16th.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up by the country's government and the UN in 2002 to try those deemed most responsible for human rights violations in the later stages of the civil war.
It issued 13 indictments against leaders from all three main warring factions, but three suspects have since died.
The AFRC staged a coup on May 25th, 1997, ousting the president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, six months after he signed a peace deal. It then joined with the RUF rebels in a bid to gain control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines.
"Captured women and girls were raped . . . AFRC/RUF also physically mutilated men, women and children, including carving 'AFRC' and 'RUF' on their bodies," the prosecution said.
It also said the three men acted in concert with Taylor.
Many ordinary Sierra Leoneans take only a passing interest in the tribunal, partly because rebel leaders Foday Sankoh and Sam "Mosquito" Bockarie are dead and partly because they are too busy living day-to-day in one of the world's poorest countries.
The prosecution listed towns and villages around Sierra Leone where fighters hacked civilians to death, kidnapped others and took them to bases with names such as like "Superman Camp" or forced them to work as diamond miners.Forces loyal to Mr Kabbah forced the AFRC/RUF junta from power in February 1998.
British military intervention to back up UN peacekeepers checked the rebel advance in 2000, helping to end a decade of war in which an estimated 50,000 people were killed.
- (Reuters)