Sierra Leone charged 12 people in reference to a failed coup try, in keeping with a Wednesday assertion from Minister of Data and Civic Schooling Chernor Bah. Among the many accused is Amadu Koita, a former soldier and bodyguard to ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma.
The fees embody a spread of offenses, together with treason, misprision of treason, harbouring and aiding and abetting the enemy. Koita and his 11 co-defendants are the primary to face authorized penalties. Nevertheless, the assertion added that “different accused individuals are anticipated to be charged within the coming days.”
The attempted coup on November 26, 2023, noticed a number of gunmen launch assaults on numerous vital places in Freetown, together with the navy armory at Wilberforce Barracks and a jail. The assailants managed to free roughly 2,200 inmates and kill greater than 20 folks within the course of. Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio subsequently declared a nationwide curfew. He additionally later announced the arrest of many of the assault’s leaders and declared that calm had been restored to the nation.
The failed coup adopted months of social unrest from the controversial June 2023 presidential election. President Bio, representing the ruling Sierra Leone Folks’s Social gathering (SLPP), secured victory with a 56.17 % majority vote. Nevertheless, the election outcome confronted scrutiny and rejection from his major rival, Samura Kamara of the All Folks’s Congress (APC), who garnered 41.16 %. Kamara contested the outcome, citing a scarcity of transparency, and called for an intensive investigation into the electoral course of.
This incident occurred in opposition to the backdrop of a troubling surge in military coups throughout the area, with six African international locations experiencing such takeovers previously three years. Included amongst these international locations are Gabon and Niger, whose respective coups each occurred in 2023.
