Amnesty International Report 1999 - Sierra Leone

SIERRA LEONE

The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) continued to detain prisoners of conscience without charge or trial and was responsible for torture and extrajudicial executions. After their removal from power in February, the AFRC and the armed opposition Revolutionary United Front (RUF) killed and mutilated thousands of unarmed civilians. A civilian militia supporting the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), was also responsible for extrajudicial executions and torture, although on a significantly smaller scale. Hundreds of people alleged to have collaborated with the AFRC and RUF were detained without charge by the reinstated government. Thirty-four soldiers were sentenced to death by a court martial which did not meet international standards for fair trial; 24 were executed. Forty-two civilians and the leader of the RUF were also sentenced to death.

The elected government of President Kabbah was reinstated after the AFRC was forced from power in February by West African forces deployed in Sierra Leone – the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). The AFRC had seized power in a military coup in May 1997 and was joined by the RUF (see Amnesty International Report 1998).

During the ECOMOG offensive on Freetown, the capital, in February, AFRC and RUF forces deliberately and arbitrarily killed many civilians. Several hundred others were injured or killed as a result of shelling by both sides, which in some cases appeared to be indiscriminate.

Following their removal from power and throughout the rest of the year, AFRC and RUF forces embarked on a systematic campaign of killing, rape, mutilation, abduction and destruction in the east and north of the country. By December rebel forces had advanced towards Freetown and an attack on Freetown appeared imminent. The government of Liberia was widely reported to be providing combatants, arms and ammunition to rebel forces.

In late April President Kabbah announced that the CDF, composed of traditional hunters such as the kamajors, had been placed under the command of ECOMOG.

On 10 March President Kabbah proclaimed a state of emergency, subsequently ratified by parliament, which included provisions for indefinite detention without charge or trial. Some 2,000 soldiers and civilians suspected of collaboration with the AFRC and RUF were detained following the ECOMOG intervention. Many were suspected of human rights abuses.

In May the government established an independent committee of investigation to review the cases of several hundred detainees and recommend whether they should be charged or released.

Implementation of a comprehensive plan for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, including an estimated 5,000 child soldiers, from the RUF, CDF and national army, was limited because of continuing conflict.

The UN and other intergovernmental organizations repeatedly condemned as gross breaches of international humanitarian law the atrocities committed against civilians by rebel forces. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, following a visit to Sierra Leone in May, called for a more vigorous and concerted response by the international community to the needs of children affected by the conflict.

In July the UN Security Council established a peace-keeping operation, the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). UNOMSIL human rights officers consistently investigated and reported human rights abuses, monitored treason trials and undertook several other important initiatives which contributed to the protection of human rights.

On 30 July the UN Secretary-General convened a special conference in New York, USA, attended by representatives of the government of Sierra Leone, intergovernmental organizations including the UN, the Organization of African Unity, ECOWAS, the European Union and the Commonwealth, and humanitarian organizations. The conference agreed to establish an international contact group to coordinate support for efforts to restore peace, stability, democracy and human rights in Sierra Leone. It first met in November.

While in power, the AFRC and RUF committed widespread human rights violations, including detention without charge or trial, torture and extrajudicial executions. Among prisoners of conscience detained by the AFRC were Sylvanus Kanyako, a journalist on the Herald Guardian, and David Kamara, its proprietor, who were arrested in January, held without charge for three weeks, and tortured.

In mid-January in Kenema, Eastern Province, the RUF detained several community leaders accused of supporting the kamajors. They were repeatedly beaten and one died as a result. Some were released, but several others remained held, including B.S. Massaquoi, Chairman of the town council. He was killed by RUF forces in February, and his mutilated body was reported to have been found with 35 others in a mass grave near Kenema the following month.

After they were removed from power, AFRC and RUF forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians, including many women and children, in the east and north of the country. The exact number of those killed remained unknown. The town of Koidu, in Kono District, Eastern Province, was virtually destroyed by rebel forces in April, and more than 650 bodies were reported to have been found there. More than 200 unarmed civilians were killed during an attack on Yifin, a village in Koinadugu District, Northern Province, in late April.

As many as 4,000 men, women and children suffered mutilation, crude amputations of their hands, arms, legs, lips or ears; others suffered lacerations and gunshot wounds. Survivors of attacks recounted that many others from their villages had been killed or had fled into the bush where many died of their injuries. They reported that villagers had been rounded up and locked in houses which were then set alight. Women and girls were systematically raped or subjected to other forms of sexual assault. Men who refused to rape members of their own families had their limbs amputated as punishment. Children were ripped from their mothers' backs and killed with machetes. Among the victims who were evacuated to Freetown was a 15-year-old schoolboy from Koidu who had severe lacerations to his right ankle after an attempted amputation; about 50 people with him were killed when they were attacked on 1 May.

Reports of atrocities declined significantly during July, but from August onwards, atrocities by rebel forces in Northern and Eastern Provinces escalated. In early September, for example, at least 40 civilians, including children, were reported to have been killed in Kamalu, Bombali District, Northern Province. Some of those killed had first been tortured and sexually assaulted and others were burned alive. Some 50 civilians were reported to have been abducted in Kamalu.

Hundreds of civilians, in particular children and young men and women, were abducted during attacks by rebel forces. They were forced to fight and used as forced labour; women and girls were forced into sexual slavery. All those abducted were at risk of ill-treatment and deliberate and arbitrary killing. As many as 10,000 civilians in rebel-controlled areas, in particular in Kailahun District, Eastern Province, were effectively held captive.

An estimated 570,000 civilians fled to neighbouring countries to escape the violence or became internally displaced. Many remained at risk of killing, mutilation and abduction. In September rebel forces attacked a refugee camp at Tomandu in Guinea, killing at least seven women refugees and three Guineans and forcing others to carry looted goods across the border. In November, 20 refugees in Tomandu who crossed the border in search of food had their hands cut off by rebel forces. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees subsequently moved thousands of refugees from Tomandu to camps further inside Guinea.

In mid-February several foreign humanitarian aid workers were captured and held hostage for two weeks by RUF forces who demanded the release of their leader, Foday Sankoh, who had been detained in Nigeria since March 1997. An Italian priest abducted in Kamalu by rebel forces in November remained held hostage at the end of the year.

The CDF were responsible for extrajudicial executions and torture and ill-treatment of captured combatants and real or suspected supporters of the AFRC and RUF. AFRC soldiers were summarily executed by kamajors in Koidu in February; some were decapitated, others were doused with petrol or had tyres placed around them and were burned alive. At least 50 people were extrajudicially executed in Kenema in February. Human rights violations by the CDF decreased significantly after June, apparently following intervention by the government and ECOMOG.

There were some reports that ECOMOG forces were responsible for illegal detention of civilians and torture and ill-treatment of combatants during surrender or capture. Reports also suggested that ECOMOG forces handed over some captured rebels to the CDF who then summarily executed them. UNOMSIL also expressed concern that ECOMOG forces did not consistently respect international humanitarian law in relation to the protection ofnon-combatants in areas affected by conflict.

Hundreds of people alleged to have collaborated with the AFRC and RUF were held without charge under legislation allowing indefinite detention without charge or trial. By December about 100 detainees had been released unconditionally and others were released either on bail or pending further investigation after their cases were reviewed by the independent committee of investigation; in other cases the committee concluded that there was evidence of criminal offences.

In April, 59 civilian prisoners, one of whom later died in detention, were charged with treason and some also with murder and arson. Three separate trials began the following month before the High Court in Freetown. Sixteen defendants were convicted and sentenced to death in August, 11 in October and 15 in November. Seven were sentenced to terms of imprisonment and the others were acquitted. Appeals against conviction and sentence had not been heard by the end of the year. Another 22 civilians were charged with treason in December.

RUF leader Foday Sankoh was returned to Sierra Leone from Nigeria in July and in September brought to trial for treason and other offences. Efforts by the government to obtain legal representation for Foday Sankoh were unsuccessful because lawyers feared reprisals. In October he was convicted and sentenced to death. His appeal against conviction and sentence, during which he was to be represented by lawyers from abroad, had not commenced by the end of the year.

A court martial of 37 soldiers, including prominent AFRC members, charged with treason and other offences began in late July. In October, 34 were convicted and sentenced to death; the others were acquitted. Despite a 1975 Appeal Court ruling that the death penalty for treason was discretionary, the court martial refused to accept arguments that the death penalty was not mandatory for these offences. The court martial allowed no right of appeal to a higher jurisdiction, contrary to international standards for fair trial. The convicted soldiers appealed to a special committee for the prerogative of mercy, chaired by the President. Despite calls for clemency by the international community and submissions on behalf of 18 of those convicted to the UN Human Rights Committee under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 24 were publicly executed a week later. The others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

In December, two journalists, Winston Ojukutu-Macaulay and Sylvester Rogers, both British Broadcasting Corporation correspondents, were arrested. Winston Ojukutu-Macaulay was charged with publication of false news for allegedly publishing false information about hostilities and failing to check his stories with ECOMOG, and released on bail. A third journalist was also sought.

Prisoners and detainees were held in conditions which in some cases amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Following large-scale detentions after February, the Central Prison, Pademba Road, in Freetown was severely overcrowded. Conditions were particularly harsh in prisons outside the capital and at the headquarters of the police Criminal Investigation Department and the Central Police Station in Freetown.

Before the AFRC and RUF were removed from power, Amnesty International repeatedly appealed for the release of prisoners of conscience and an end to detention without charge or trial, torture and ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions.

In late February Amnesty International requested that those detained for alleged collaboration with the AFRC and RUF be charged and brought to trial in accordance with international standards with a minimum of delay and that those not to be charged be released. The Minister of Justice and Attorney General responded that detainees included prisoners of war and those who had surrendered for their own safety and that criminal investigations were proceeding.

In early May Amnesty International publicized escalating atrocities by rebel forces. It called for an end to human rights abuses against civilians and for the urgent establishment of an independent human rights presence in the country.

An Amnesty International delegation visited Sierra Leone in May and met government officials and members of the military, the legal profession and non-governmental organizations, as well as victims of human rights abuses.

Amnesty International addressed a report to the UN special conference in July – The United Nations special conference on Sierra Leone: The protection of human rights must be a priority for the international community. The report called for an end to impunity as a prerequisite for lasting peace and recommended: that UNOMSIL be given the necessary resources to monitor violations of international humanitarian and human rights law; that particular attention be given to the needs of children affected by the conflict; and that assistance be provided to create effective institutions for the protection and respect of human rights.

An Amnesty International representative observed the early stages of the court martial of AFRC members in late July. Amnesty International repeatedly urged the government to allow a judicial appeal procedure from the court martial.

Amnesty International appealed to President Kabbah to commute all death sentences and in October condemned the execution of the 24 soldiers.

In November Amnesty International published Sierra Leone: 1998 – a year of atrocities against civilians, which documented in particular the gross human rights abuses committed by rebel forces and made specific recommendations to the government, rebel forces and the international community for ending human rights abuses and ensuring the protection of human rights in the future.