SIERRA LEONE: A special UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone yesterday approved the indictment of seven people, including rebel leader Foday Sankoh and the west African country's interior minister, for their roles in the brutal 10-year civil war, the court said in a statement
The internal affairs minister, Sam Hinga Norman, had already been arrested, the court announced.
Mr David Crane, the special prosecutor of the court, said in the statement that the indictments showed that the people of Sierra Leone had taken back control of their lives. He added: "The dark days of the gun are over."
The others indicted alongside Norman and Sankoh, who has been in detention for more than two years, include rebel commanders Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon, Sam Bockarie and former junta leader Johnny Paul Koroma.
The court said that the accused men were guilty of crimes ranging from "murder, rape, extermination, acts of terror, enslavement, looting and burning, sexual slavery and conscription of children into an armed force".
Sankoh was the charismatic leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which led a savage decade-long war against the government from 1991. An estimated 100,000 people died in the conflict.
Thousands of civilians had their limbs hacked off during the fighting in Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest countries. Mass rape was also used to terrorise the population.
Norman controlled a government-backed civil militia comprising mainly traditional "kamajor" hunters, who were also accused of atrocities.
The court said that Koroma and Bockarie were "indicted war criminals with outstanding warrants for their arrest" and the prosecutor called on the people of Sierra Leone to turn them over to the authorities. "Further indictments will follow," he added.
Koroma, a former officer of the Sierra Leone army who led a short-lived military regime after toppling President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, went into hiding just before police raided his Freetown home in January following an attack on a military depot. Bockarie has been in hiding for months.
Sierra Leone and the United Nations signed an agreement in January this year to set up the tribunal.
Under Sierra Leonean law, Sankoh faces the death penalty if found guilty. But the UN Special Court does not have the power to hand out the death sentence. - (AFP)