Global Policy Forum

By Clarence Roy-Macaulay

At the old British colonial prison in Sierra Leone's capital, a high wall, electric fence and tents full of guards armed with AK-47s separate rebel leader Foday Sankoh from the country he laid waste to for 10 years. Authorities won't even confirm Sankoh is there, preserving maximum security and secrecy for the man behind a terror war of atrocities.

At the United Nations in New York, officials tote up international pledges made to date to fund a projected war-crimes trial for the imprisoned rebel leader - but say they fall short. In the city around the prison, Sierra Leone's people tote up a tally of their own - and find ample material to work with.

Sankoh's rebels killed, maimed, gang-raped, burned, kidnapped and drugged children to force them to fight, said Freetown resident Kenneth Smith, who like many here responds to a question about trial for Sankoh by ticking off a list of fitting charges.

"He should be tried for human-rights atrocities ... just like Milosevic," said Smith, citing the former Yugoslav leader taken before an international war crimes tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, last week. "He is no different," the Freetown man said.

At last count, U.N. officials had raised $34.4 million of the $114 million they initially sought to pay for trials in Sierra Leone's civil war, and they have pared their goal to $55 million. By contrast, the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia - a much larger conflict - has spent $471 million. The prospect is that a Sierra Leone court will be established, but will hold fewer trials, said Peter Takirambudde, executive director for Africa for the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch.

Fought in an obscure West African country, Sierra Leone's war might have escaped world attention almost entirely if not for the viciousness of its rebels. Sankoh, a white-bearded former wedding photographer, launched his Revolutionary United Front in 1991, after reportedly training in Libya under Moammar Gadhafi's patronage. The rebels' aim: gaining control of Sierra Leone and its diamond fields.

Rebels are estimated to have killed at least 50,000 people, though that doesn't include the sizable part of the country under rebel control and until recently inaccessible. Sankoh's movement kidnapped children as fighters. Boys as young as 6 called him "Pa Sankoh" and killed on command. Rebels made mutilation their trademark - hacking off arms, legs and ears of children and adults alike. Overrunning Freetown in 1999, they divvied up the atrocities - splitting into units like the "Burn House Unit" and "Cut Hand Commandos." At least 6,000 civilians are believed to have died within days.

"The people of Sierra Leone are no less human beings. The kids that are being slaughtered were also kids - they had hopes, they had dreams," Takirambudde said. A "double standard in justice" was evident in the international response to Sierra Leone, compared to that of the former Yugoslavia, he said.

Advocates of trials argue Sierra Leone must break the cycle of impunity that has let Sankoh's rebels make peace deals three times only to resume the war. Culprits on all sides must be tried, they say, to give Sierra Leone guidance on a long-unfamiliar subject - justice.

Captured before, Sankoh was sentenced to death by a Sierra Leone court in 1998. But, desperate to stop the attacks, Sierra Leone's government signed a peace accord granting all rebels amnesty. Sankoh's fighters broke even that accord in May 2000, taking at least 500 U.N. peacekeepers hostage and killing at least 20 demonstrators outside Sankoh's house. Sankoh was taken into custody - again - days later. The government has the upper hand today, thanks in large part to deployment of British troops and the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping force.

Rebels have released hundreds of child soldiers, turned in many assault rifles and rocket launchers, and signed a cease-fire with pro-government militias. In return, they argue, Sankoh and about 120 other imprisoned rebel leaders should be freed.

On Friday, President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah ordered the release of 34 imprisoned people, most members of the Revolutionary United Front. Those freed were rebels "who could be released without being any threat to the community," Attorney General Solomon Berewa told The Associated Press. Sankoh's release, Berewa and other government officials say, isn't under consideration.

"If anyone is to be tried by the special court to be set up ... Foday Sankoh must be one of them," Berewa said. In any case, Sierra Leone insists, Sankoh is out of the picture now. The only time he's been allowed out of his prison was in August. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo summoned him to Freetown's airport then to show him a letter in which rebels served notice they had elected a new leader.

But at a disarmament ceremony in the countryside last week, Pa Sankoh remained on the minds of his young fighters.

Power "to Foday Sankoh," the boys sang, laying down their arms.

"Power to the people."

"Through the machine gun."