The jailed leader of Sierra Leone’s brutal rebel movement was charged with murder Monday, almost two years after 19 people were killed during protests outside his home in Freetown.
Foday Sankoh, who led the West African nation’s Revolutionary United Front, had been jailed since being arrested after the killings in May 2000. The demonstrators died when shots were fired from Sankoh’s home.
Sankoh and 49 other rebels were ordered held without bail Monday and taken to Freetown’s central prison after a hearing in which all were charged with murder and conspiracy to murder — 33 of them for crimes that occurred as far back as July 1999.
Sankoh was charged days after President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah ended a 4-year-old emergency that had enabled the government to detain Sankoh indefinitely without charging him.
Sankoh also is expected to be charged by a war crimes tribunal set up by the government and the United Nations. His rebel movement, founded in 1991, cut off the limbs of thousands of civilians and forced children to fight their battles in an effort to gain control of Sierra Leone’s diamond mines.
