Sierra Leone's rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a dreaded cult figure

FREETOWN, July 30 (AFP) - Foday Sankoh, Sierra Leone's once dreaded rebel leader who died late Tuesday, used his cult-like status and revolutionary rhetoric to wage a bloody decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone.

Sankoh was revered by rural peasants who nevertheless became the main targets of a grisly rebellion launched by his Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in 1991.

BizVantage – Serious business, investment and technology intelligence for a serious advantage.
Try the free, no-hassle 6 month trial!

With the help of neighbouring Liberia, Sankoh pilfered Sierra Leone's eastern region of diamonds to finance the insurgency by his so-called jungle army of barefoot conscripts, child soldiers and army deserters.

In the RUF's 10-year campaign of terror, which was officially ended in May 2001, the often cocaine-crazed fighters razed villages and murdered, raped and savaged civilians, hacking off hands, legs and ears.

About 200,000 people were killed and thousands more were mutilated.

By the time of his death, when Sankoh faced trial before a UN-backed war crimes court set up by Sierra Leone, the former rebel supremo had been reduced to a bizarre and almost sorry figure.

The Special Court last week rejected an appeal to have Sankoh's trial halted on health grounds, despite signs that his mental state had been profoundly altered by a stroke last year.

At a separate court hearing last year Sankoh, sporting dreadlocks and sometimes breaking into fits of unexplained laughter, said he was "surprised that I am being tried because I am the leader of the world".

At his last appearance in court on March 15, the former rebel leader appeared incapable of speaking at all.

A court doctor said he was partially paralysed and needed psychiatric treatment, describing Sankoh as being in a "catatonic state".

Always unpredictable, Sankoh has long defied the international community and humiliated the United Nations, whose officials helped broker Sierra Leone's peace accord.

Sankoh's contempt for the United Nations began after his brief service in the then Belgian Congo under the UN flag in the early 1960s.

He is said to have never forgiven the United Nations for "allowing" the assassination in 1961 of then prime minister Patrice Lumumba, whom Sankoh cites as a revolutionary inspiration for Africa.

Sankoh had served in the British colonial army, later became a photographer, and landed himself in jail several times over political opposition activities.

When President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah won elections in March 1996, most people were celebrating the return of democracy, ending four years of despised military rule.

But the RUF refused to recognise the legitimacy of the polls and condemned the new government as an avatar of former corrupt and despotic regimes.

Sankoh signed the Abidjan peace accord in 1996 "in the interest of Sierra Leoneans."

But his fighters never laid down their arms. In 1997 when army soldiers seized power in Freetown, Sankoh, who was in detention in Nigeria at the time, appealed to his troops over a radio message to support the junta.

The rebel leader was sentenced to death for treason in 1998 but granted amnesty and released the following year as part of a deal with the RUF that fell apart when the rebels went on the offensive again.

The Sierra Leonean government and the United Nations signed an agreement on January 16 last year on setting up the Special Court.

bur-ach/gd

SLeone-Sankoh-obit