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lars, were making gains across the country. In 1996 elections were held and Ahmad Tejan
Kabbah was declared president, but a year later, after peace talks had brought some hope,
the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) grabbed control of government and de-
cided to share power with the RUF. By this time fractionalisation and desertion on both
sides had led to an utter free-for-all, with the civilian population suffering atrocities at
every turn.
Hopes & Fears
In March 1998 the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (Eco-
mog), a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force, retook Freetown and reinstated Kabbah. Some
sort of peace held until January 1999, when the RUF and AFRC launched 'Operation No
Living Thing'. The ensuing carnage in and around Freetown killed 6000 people, mutilated
many more (lopping a limb off was an RUF calling card) and prompted the government to
sign the Lomé Peace Agreement. A massive UN peacekeeping mission (Unamsil) was de-
ployed, but 10 months later it came under attack from the RUF. Three hundred UN troops
were abducted, but as the RUF closed in on Freetown in mid-2000 the British government
deployed 1000 paratroopers and an aircraft carrier to prevent a massacre and shift the bal-
ance of power back to Kabbah's government and UN forces. By February 2002 the RUF
was disarmed and its leaders captured. Elections were held a few months later; Kabbah
was re-elected and the RUF's political wing was soundly defeated.
Unamsil became the largest and most expensive peacekeeping mission in UN history up
until that time, and also one of its most effective. The last of the 17,500 soldiers departed
in 2005. Peace had won.
The road to justice, however, was just beginning. The Special Court for Sierra Leone, a
UN-backed judicial body charged with investigating war crimes during the conflict, was
set up in 2002 and headquartered in Freetown. It took 10 years for proceedings against
more than 15 people to be completed; among them Issa Sesay, the RUF's senior military
officer and commander, who received 52 years - the court's highest sentence - behind
bars in Rwanda. The court's most famous convictee was Charles Taylor, the former pres-
ident of next-door Liberia, who received a jail sentence of 50 years in 2012. His case was
transferred to The Hague, amid fears it could spark a resurgence of unrest in Liberia and
Sierra Leone. At the time of research Taylor was appealing his sentence.
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Sierra Leone Today
 
 
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