October 29, 2002
Every day from dawn to dusk, the once-silent scenery along Jomo Kenyatta Road in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown is shattered by the sound of bulldozers battling to dislodge stubborn granite rocks.
Dump trucks overfilled with brown soil move around the four- hectare (11-acre) lot of scrub land, while some 300 construction workers wearing rusty helmets lay columns on the outline of what within two months will become the special court for Sierra Leone.
"We are now constructing perimeter fences and very soon start the building itself," said foreman Abdul Conteh, as he dumped bags of cement and sand into a concrete mixer.
Occasionally a small crowd, mostly unemployed youths, gather to watch, but most people here are more interested in the court's upcoming proceedings than in the building, AFP reported.
Sierra Leone is gripped with special court fever. In the press and in street corner discussions, everyone is betting on who will be indicted and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in what was one of Africa's most brutal civil wars.
Officially no names have been mentioned, and special court prosecutor David Crane would only say those that bearing the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed during the 10-year war will be indicted. But the rumor mill already has a list, starting with Septuagenarian rebel leader Foday Sankoh. Other good bets are Sam Bockari, once the most feared rebel commando, as well as a string of others in the former military junta, the pro-government Kamajor militia.
"It's just a matter of time, and everything will be put in its proper perspective," an official at the attorney general's office says. "The judges are expected here in November to coincide with the completion of the court house and detention center, and the court session will begin in December," she adds.
Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) began fighting the government in 1991, in a campaign that saw tens of thousands of civilians killed, savagely mutilated, raped or displaced. The group is infamous for chopping off the limbs of civilians -- including women and children. But it argues that mutilation was practised by others including the state-backed civil militia.
William Haglad, a forensics expert on assignment for the court, estimates that more than 30 mass graves are scattered around the country. "When you come to a situation like Sierra Leone, or many of the countries I have been in, one never finds all the mass graves. One never exhumes all the graves that are found and one never identifies all the individuals that are in those graves," Hagland says.
But he says scientific information from the graves can be used to aid legal cases. "Their bones have a story to tell. Their bones can tell how old the victims were, what sex they were. They can tell whether they were tortured before they were killed. By looking at the graves, we can tell how the graves were dug," he said.
Hagland, director of the Boston-based forensic program for physicians for human rights, said some of the mass graves were made from mining pits, latrines and water wells. Those charged through the special court will have defense lawyers during their trial. During their pre-trial detention, an international security agency will keep 24-hour "suicide watch" over their cells, to prevent them from taking their own lives.
"Those found guilty after the trial would serve their sentences in Sierra Leone prisons or incarcerated elsewhere at the discretion of the international community," the court's public affairs officer David Hecht says, The International Court in Rwanda jailed some of its convicted war criminals in Mali.
Critics have questioned whether the 59 million dollars to be spent during the court's three-year operation should have been used to rebuild infrastructure and jump start the economy.
Court officials say donors specifically pledged the money for the court, without affecting funds targeted for development in Sierra Leone. Court prosecutor David Crane has meanwhile set the posture of his ongoing investigations, which had taken him to two key areas of former rebel stronghold -- Koidu, in the east where a mass grave has been discovered, and Makeni, in the north, which was the semi-headquarters of the rebel movement.
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