Freetown — Whether they are former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), or people's heroes of the Sierra Leone Civil Defence Forces (CDF), the eight men serving prison sentences in the Republic of Rwanda for war crimes and crimes against humanity are citizens of the Republic of Sierra Leone who were sent to Rwanda on Sierra Leone passports.

Unlike the United States detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the three AFRC, three RUF and two CDF detainees at Mpanga Prison in Rwanda are by no means beasts of no nation and should never be left to the goodwill and hospitality of the international community or the soon to dissolve Special Court for Sierra Leone.

The late Chief Sam Hinga Norman

The men in Rwanda are our prisoners held at our request by the international community for crimes allegedly committed by Sierra Leoneans against Sierra Leoneans in Sierra Leone. The body that sent these men to Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, is also the brainchild of the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations. Of course, a more sensible government and a less hypocritical international community of nations would have chosen genuine reconciliation through the much ignored Truth & Reconciliation Commission. But then, no one has ever accused our world leaders of being the best and brightest outcome of the evolutionary process, if there was such a thing as human evolution.

Be that as it may, it is my judgment that it is morally indefensible, socially abhorrent and politically suicidal (for those who have ears to hear) to simply dump these men on the international community. History recalls that this was the same way Pontius Pilate tried to wash his hands of the execution of Jesus Christ as though it was simply a Jewish affair when in fact it was Rome which sentenced Jesus to death for alleged crimes against the Roman Empire. Rather than peace through reconciliation, we as a nation chose to selectively prosecute a rather inconsequential minority of the warring factions.

The resulting prisoners of such an ill-conceived judicial process are our national responsibility, regardless of which country actually holds these prisoners on our behalf. Though the task of incarceration has been delegated to Rwanda, the responsibility for these men has not and cannot be delegated. Responsibility, I was told in one of my graduate management classes, can never be delegated.

To start with, His Excellency, President Ernest Koroma, though he had no hands in the creation of the Special Court and probably wished that both the court and its problematic prisoners simply vanished - but they won't - has a moral and constitutional responsibility to be properly informed of the whereabouts and well being of these our brethren and to assure the nation that they are serving their sentences honorably wherever they are presently.

We are, however, reliably informed that since their arrival in Rwanda, our citizens have never been visited by the Sierra Leone Ambassador to Ethiopia who is also accredited to Rwanda to ascertain their well being. We, therefore, implore His Excellency both as Chief Magistrate of the Republic and Father of the Nation to ensure as our glorious National Anthem instructs us that "No harm on thy children may fall. That blessing and peace may descend on us all."

It is also my understanding that there is a body in the Sierra Leone House of Representatives called the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Human Rights whose role it is to make sure that all Sierra Leoneans - even those judged to be the least among us - are accorded the same basic human rights accorded to all our citizens at home and abroad. One would expect then that with respect to the Special Court detainees the Speaker of the House and both the Majority and Minority Leaders should as a matter of urgency get together and send a member of the Human Rights Committee to Rwanda to ensure that our citizens there are accorded the same rights accorded to all international prisoners.

For their part as the loyal opposition, the SLPP, I am told, made a half-hearted appeal to the Registrar of the Special Court to keep these men from being taken from Sierra Leone. As they say in America, the Opposition was a day late and a dollar short. What the SLPP should have done was not to have established the Special Court in the first place. Having established the tribunal in concert with the United Nations, the former SLPP government should have done everything possible to exempt the CDF which they themselves created and armed after their own soldiers connived with the RUF to twice remove them from power from prosecution.

Having failed to exempt the CDF from prosecution, the SLPP should have at the very least provided moral and humanitarian support in cash and kind to the families of the CDF detainees. Having failed to do all of the above and having been evicted from power by the people for neglect of duty, what the SLPP parliamentarians should now do is to seek some form of collective redemption by working with the ruling APC government to ensure that not only they CDF they betrayed but the rest of our citizens presently incarcerated in Rwanda are in good hands.

Next, the citizens of Sierra Leone, although ordinarily nonchalant and pre-occupied with their perpetual poverty, should take a break from their usual falling down and getting up and demand of both the government and the Special Court to account for these men presently incarcerated in a country most of us only know for war and genocide rather than as the final arbiter of international justice.

Where is Rwanda, anyway? And who decided to take our citizens to a place most of us have never been to or have any desire to go to? I know that Guinea has always been a place of refuge for our deposed heads of state - Siaka Stevens and Tejan Kabbah, to be sure - but why was Rwanda so eager to rid us of eight of our less desirable citizens? These are some of the questions an enlightened citizenry should ask its leaders.

Finally, there are also various civil society and student human rights groups in this country who should demand both from government and the Special Court how our citizens are doing in Rwanda. That at least is one way some of these groups can justify their existence. I am strangely amused by one such group known as the Child Rights Constitution World which claims that it is cruel for boys ten years and below to join the Poro Society. I was nine years old when I was joined and I would rather prevail on this group to inquire about the welfare of our citizens incarcerated in Rwanda as a far more appropriate utilization of their idle time.

For the sake of transparency, I must state that I have spoken to some of the detainees in Rwanda including members of the CDF and RUF. I am also informed that efforts are underway at the Special Court to send members of the immediate families designated by the detainees to Rwanda for a visit. I am personally convinced that the men are faring well considering in the case of the CDF they are serving sentences for offences I don't believe they should have been charged with, in the first place. As it is written, "If it were not so, I would have told you."

As many of you well know by now, I will not allow people in government or the Special Court to sleep well if the CDF detainees are not sleeping well. After all, the CDF came into being by an Act of Parliament which hired, armed and mobilized them to go to war on our behalf when our own national army rebelled against the constitutional government and a less than honorable international community abandoned our people and fled the country en masse.

We were all fully aware that the main purpose for arming the CDF was to kill since the main purpose of war is to kill or be killed; and that's why we deployed the CDF. But no one should accept my word as fact that the detainees are fairing well. I am not a representative of the Special Court, the Government of Sierra Leone or the UN both of which created the Special Court and its never ending saga.

In short, Sierra Leone should never abandon any of our citizens abroad, whether saints or sinners. History will judge both the government and the people of Sierra Leone very harshly if we abandon our collective and individual civic and constitutional responsibilities to the international community. Posterity will hold us in very low esteem if we fail to stand up for the rights of our own citizens whether we like them or not.

It was a profound national shame to allow Chief Sam Hinga Norman to die in a foreign prison. Now we have another opportunity to prove ourselves worthy of the freedoms for which Mr. Norman and his colleagues of the CDF fought and died. As the one hundredth member of the United Nations, Sierra Leoneans should not allow others to fight for our freedom, usurp our system of justice and assign to others the responsibility for our own citizens and still maintain our national pride among the community of nations.

We are, after all, the land of Unity, Freedom and Justice as inscribed on our Great Seal.

Writer, Rev. Alfred Munda SamForay, is the former spokesman and adviser to the Hinga Norman Defence Fund and the Sierra Leone Civil Defence Forces. He presently resides in the Eastern Regional capital of Kenema.