For the first time a Sierra Leonean is serving as acting prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court trying those accused of violating international humanitarian law and national law in the civil war that tore the West African country apart between 1996 and 2001.

Appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, senior Sierra Leonean lawyer Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara took up his post today pending the naming of a new prosecutor to replace Stephen Rapp, who resigned earlier this month to become UN Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes.

Mr. Kamara, who worked for eight years as prosecutor in Sierra Leone's Office of the Director of Public Prosecution, rising to the rank of senior state counsel, joined the Special Court's Office of the Prosecutor in 2004 and was named Deputy Prosecutor a year ago. Earlier this year he was elected President of the Sierra Leone Bar Association.

Set up jointly by the Government of Sierra Leone and the UN in 2002, the Court is mandated to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law and national law committed in Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996.

In July, Mr. Rapp told the Security Council the Court had been ground-breaking in several respects, including the first-ever convictions on the charge of sexual slavery, both as a war crime and crime against humanity, as well as convictions on the use of child soldiers.

The Court, which normally sits in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, has completed three multiple-accused trials. A fourth trial, that of former Liberian president Charles Taylor on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, is currently under way in The Hague.