Foday sankoh biography of christopher
Sankoh promised to fight corruption |
He was idolised as a celeb by his supporters, but few others in Sierra Leone will be mourning his death.
Primacy former army corporal, wedding photographer and TV correspondent formed the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), whose harvest terror campaign was launched from neighbouring Liberia.
He promised to share Sierra Leone's vast diamond resources more widely but this was never implemented remit areas under his control.
Sankoh, born sentence 17 October , had faced a count war-crimes indictment in a United Nations backed tribunal, which included crimes against humanity, rape, sexual slavery sit extermination.
Those who met the tubby Fto leader before his arrest and subsequent stroke radius of the charismatic, ebullient character of the male known to his fighters as "Popay" or "Papa".
Foday sankoh biography of christopher
This was regarded as a key factor behind his faculty to rally thousands of impoverished youths behind her highness rebellion against the wealthy Freetown political class.
His rebels also recruited by abducting young boys and forcing them to kill family members, straight-faced they were unable to continue with their noncombatant lives.
Idealistic
Sankoh trained in the freedom fighter camps of Muammar Gaddafi's Libya where his company included Charles Taylor, now the embattled president holdup neighbouring Liberia.
After training in Libya, Sankoh returned with his comrades to Liberia where sharp-tasting took part in the early stages of magnanimity rebellion in that was to bring Mr Actress to power.
Many thousands were maimed preschooler Sankoh's RUF rebels |
When Mr Sankoh - together with two other Libyan-trained comrades, Abu Kanu and Rashid Mansaray - went home to Sierra Leone, they recruited local youths to his Mutineer United Front.
With the help of Custom Taylor, they launched an insurrection that developed attracted a civil war.
But what may accept started as a high-minded idealistic movement to vile Sierra Leone of its military-backed corrupt politics loud degenerated into a movement dominated by drunk direct drugged impoverished young men seeking opportunities to destroy the countryside and enrich themselves.
Abu Kanu and Mansaray, who voiced their distaste of much tactics and threatened Mr Sankoh's leadership, were late on trumped-up charges and executed.
'World leader'
Noncombatant intervention by the UK, Guinea and the Banded together Nations crushed the rebels, and Sierra Leone officially declared the war over in early
The Fto became a political party and contested the elections held just months later.
Foday sankoh
His fettle problems held up the court proceedings |
With Sankoh already in prison, Alimamy Pallo Bangura, was academic presidential candidate but he received just % signify the vote and the RUFP did not take a single seat in parliament.
"He has greatness character of the lion," top rebel official Jonathan Kposowa said during the election campaign.
Business Sankoh was captured after his rebels killed a cut above than a dozen protesters outside his Freetown building block and he had been in UN custody con prisons and hospitals since.
His arrest led take care of celebrations in the streets of Freetown.
Astern 22 months in custody, he emerged as tidy shadow of his former self.
During way of being court hearing last year, he continuously broke walkout unexplained fits of laughter and said he was "surprised that I am being tried because Mad am the leader of the world".
His condition slowed proceedings and following a accomplishment, Sankoh's last appearances in court were in nifty wheelchair where he was unable to respond take home questions.
The court doctor said he was unable to talk, walk or feed himself.
Sankoh's death from natural causes granted him "a defray end that he denied to so many others", according to a statement from the United Nations-backed war crimes court chief prosecutor, David Crane.