Washington, D.C. — The United States will give US$5 million to a special United Nations fund toward the first year of operation of a projected war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone. The administration has pledged another $10 million but will need to get Congressional approval for that money to get into the hands of the UN.
"Our government is very pleased," said Sierra Leone's Ambassador to the United States, John E. Leigh.
Officially called a "Special Court," the tribunal will need US$56 million over the next three years according to Ambassador Leigh. Originally, the United Nations estimated that the trial would cost US$114 million then pared it back. The international body has about US$35 million in hand. A U.N. tribunal underway in former Yugoslavia has already spent US$471 million.
Ten years of brutal warfare have devastated Sierra Leone. An estimated 50,000 civilians were killed; hundreds of thousands became refugees.
The leadership of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) will be the defendants at the tribunal. They are accused of making rape, torture, drugs, amputation and mutilation trademarks of their campaign to take over the country.
According to the Sierra Leone government and other observers, RUF head Foday Sankoh was the man behind this terror and also encouraged the use of hundreds of child soldiers - many of whom had not reached their teenage years - in combat. To these young killers, he became known as "Pa Sankoh." He is reportedly being held at the old British colonial prison in Freetown but government officials will not confirm or deny this.
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The war crimes tribunal is essential to putting the decade of warfare behind Sierra Leone, Ambassador Leigh believes, but the country "is in a very difficult situation. Our capacity is inadequate, our government hardpressed."
An official at the Department of State's War Crimes Bureau called the war crimes court a "major priority" of the United States. Point person for the U.S. will be former Rwandan genocide trial prosecutor Pierre Prosper who is now Ambassador-designate, waiting confirmation by Congress to become "Ambassador-at- Large for War Crimes Issues."
Composition of the Court is undecided but it should be headed by "a very experienced non-Sierra Leonean," says Ambassador Leigh, "free of local baggage and who can do a job that will bring respect and credit." By October, predicted Ambassador Leigh, "there will be a prosecutor in Freetown beginning to take evidence."
