Foday Sankoh - Civil War

Civil War

On March 23, 1991, the RUF, led by Foday Sankoh and backed by Charles Taylor, launched its first attack in villages in Kailahun District in the diamond-rich Eastern Province of Sierra Leone.

The RUF became notorious for brutal practices such as mass rapes and amputations during the civil war. Sankoh personally ordered many operations, including one called "Operation Pay Yourself" that encouraged troops to loot anything they could find. After complaining about such tactics, Kanu and Mansaray were summarily executed. In March 1997, Sankoh fled to Nigeria, where he was put under house arrest, and then imprisoned. From this time until Sankoh's release in 1999, Sam Bockarie performed the task of director of military operations of the RUF. During the ten-year war, Sankoh broke several promises to stop fighting, including the Abidjan Peace Accord and the Lomé Peace Accord signed in 1999. Eventually the United Kingdom and ECOMOG intervened with their own small, but professional, military forces, and the RUF was eventually crushed. Sankoh was later arrested after his soldiers gunned down a number of protesters outside his Freetown home in 2000. His arrest led to massive celebrations throughout Sierra Leone. Sankoh was handed to the British and, under jurisdiction of a UN-backed court, he was indicted on 17 counts for various war crimes, including use of child soldiers, and crimes against humanity, including extermination, enslavement, rape and sexual slavery.