Foday Sankoh

Infobox_President|name=Foday Sankoh
nationality=Sierra Leonean


image size =
image caption =
order=Former Rebel leader
term_start=
term_end=
predecessor=
successor=
birth_date=birth date|1937|10|17|mf=y
birth_place=Masang Mayoso, Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone
dead=alive
death_date=death date and age|2003|7|29|1937|8|1
death_place=Freetown, Sierra Leone
spouse=
party=Revolutionary United Front (A Rebel Group)
vicepresident=
religion=Christian

Foday Saybana Sankoh (October 17, 1937-July 29, 2003) was the leader and founder of the Sierra Leone rebel group Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the 10-year-long Sierra Leone Civil War, starting in 1991 and ending in 2002. An estimated 50,000 people were killed during the war, and over 500,000 people were displaced in neighboring countries.

Early life and career

Foday Saybana Sankoh was born on October 17, 1937 in the village of Masang Mayoso, Tonkolili District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone to an ethnic Temne father and a Loko mother. A former corporal in the Sierra Leonean army, wedding photographer, and television cameraman, Sankoh became a student activist in the 1970s. After his activism earned him a short prison term, Sankoh joined a Cold War guerilla camp in Libya sponsored by Muammar al-Gaddafi, where Muammar al-Qaddafi was preaching revolutionary ideas to West African dissidents. It is here that he met Charles Taylor, future president of Liberia and Sankoh's financial benefactor and ally throughout the civil war. With his encouragement, Sankoh and two allies, Abu Kanu and Rashid Mansaray, returned from Libya to form the Revolutionary United Front(RUF).

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 United Kingdom and ECOMOG interned 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 crimes against humanity, rape, sexual slavery and Genocide.

Death

Sankoh died of complications from a stroke while awaiting trial. The chief prosecutor for the trial said Sankoh's death granted him "a peaceful end that he denied to so many others."Fact|date=March 2008

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3109521.stm BBC obituary]
* [http://public.fotki.com/sierraleone/sl_series/atrocities/ Photos of Atrocities (Warning: graphic images)]
* [http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1974062 Economist obituary]