From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars

by Ross, Hamish

  And I saw Hinga Norman – well Gen Khobe said, ‘That’s Hinga Norman,’ because I said, ‘What’s he doing?’ and he went up to the group and, through my binoculars and from what I could hear …Hinga Norman went up to the group and remonstrated with them. And it was clear that he was, even from what I could see, telling them that they must behave and stop getting so excited. And they were threatening to shoot these prisoners… And from what I saw, the impression I gained was that Chief Norman prevented that abuse from happening… During the fighting I and everyone had seen at least one apparently innocent person killed by the RUF group on the far side of the bridge. They were firing their weapons indiscriminately. And so everyone was very angry. I was very angry. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… In my judgment, Chief Hinga Norman calmed it down. Because if he hadn’t gone across the bridge, what might have happened, I don’t know.15

  That operation turned out to be a turning point in the fight for Freetown. ECOMOG and CDF/government forces drove the rebels back. However, in the rest of the country there were large areas where insurgents were in control. Gunships were badly needed.

  But in early January, when Juba and CAO Tijjani Easterbrook turned up at the Sierra Leone High Commission in London from where the contact with suppliers in Russia was to have been initiated, they found that there had been a complete breakdown in communication because the rebels were knocking at the gates of Freetown and government functionaries had abandoned their offices. It was only after the immediate threat to Freetown receded, and not until 26 January, that contact was re-established with the High Commission. Finally, on 29 January, the two flew to Moscow.

  They made contact with the Sierra Leonean ambassador to Russia, Melrose Banja, and she informed them that she had already made arrangements for them to inspect two helicopters. Sendaba had been unable to get a visa until later, and when he did, he flew direct from Freetown to Moscow, where he joined the other two. When Juba saw the aircraft documentation, there was no way he would accept those aircraft, much to the displeasure of the ambassador. She was informed by Sierra Leone’s CDS, Gen Khobe, that they should return to London, and on 9 February, they left Moscow. In London, Juba worked through arms dealers who were based in the UK and also in Latvia and found that they could procure two Mi-24s in the Ukraine. But pressure began to be exerted on them from what Tijjani Easterbrook called ‘an interest group’ of Sierra Leoneans who, through senior government staff were directed to join them unofficially. And the interest group tried to put a new deal together. As a result, Juba and the team found they were being offered two rejected helicopters from Algeria.

  They tried to put a new deal together: they got a deal in Algeria where the machines were basically scrap already, you know. So they thought they still had $3.3 million and they would buy those two machines for $1 million, and then they would put two million in their pockets sort of thing. I said to the high commissioner in London, I said to him, ‘There’s one thing you must understand, it’s I’m the guy who’s flying those machines, so I’m not going to buy rubbish. We’ve got a job to do, if you buy rubbish, we’re not going to do the job.’

  If you look at it all over, basically, there were people there who didn’t want us to succeed, it didn’t matter which way it was going: whether it was the Nigerians who wanted to make money out of the deal, but mainly it was actually the Sierra Leoneans themselves. It was a nasty situation really. But the UK made sure the money didn’t go into private pockets because that’s why they appointed Crown Agents.16

  So on 18 February, refusing to have anything to do with the Algerian aircraft, they left London for Kiev, but the sting in the tail was that a Sierra Leonean was sent with them. For what good reason? And there, in the Ukraine, two machines were procured that met the specifications Juba required. When the procurement was settled, the next stage was for the Ukrainian authorities to obtain UN authorisation to export the war machines and exempt them from the international embargo, and at that point, on 16 March, Tijjani Easterbrook left for London.

  During the time it took to get clearances from the UN, Melrose Banja, Sierra Leonean ambassador to Russia flew into the Ukraine; she tried first of all to cancel the deal, but it was too far advanced for that; then she arranged through President Kabbah that she would sign off the deal. Crown Agents appointed the International Chamber of Commerce to act on their behalf for the procurement in the Ukraine, and the ICC official, Sergey Pilipenko, questioned the need for this. Finally, the ambassador got the president’s approval to sign it off. And she also got the president’s agreement to have $80,000 she said she needed, to arrange to pay the flight back to Sierra Leone with all the hardware. Juba had to take $80,000 out of his budget for ammunition and give it to her.

  However, the saga of the helicopter purchase ended in success, and at an Independence Day ceremony on 27 April, President Kabbah announced the purchase of the gunships from the Ukraine. ‘I am delighted that the helicopter gunships are now with us, to build up our defences and to combat the ongoing war.’17 The two helicopters were delivered in a Russian AN 124, about the largest air transport in the former Soviet Union. They were partly disassembled, with the blades removed. Two Ukrainian technicians came with them, as Juba had to have work done on the aircraft: the blade tracking and some systems were not working properly.

  But I had to wait for these guys to get the aircraft serviceable, because they were so happy to get paid and they used that money to screw the locals and get pissed. It’s Africa [laughing] nobody said it was going to be easy.18

  Nor was it easy for him to get his own pay. On 6 May, two weeks after he got back, he wrote to Gen Khobe, Chief of the Defence Staff, requesting reimbursement. He had left Sierra Leone on 30 December with an advance of $3,000 to cover a ten-day absence at an approved allowance of $300 per day. He did not return until 23 April, a period of 115 days, and in that time he received a total of $9,850, which included $5,000 from Crown Agents London, so he had to use his own resources for visas, flights and hotel accommodation, and was owed $24,650 as the balance of Estacode payment.19 Sendaba, who was out of the country for 33 days, was also in the red. But on top of all that, Bokkie’s crew had not been paid since October 1998 and Juba Inc. had had to sustain the burden of payment and food allowances.

  When the Ukrainian technicians could be prevailed upon to ease off on their venial pleasures and work on the two Mi-24s, the hand over programme went ahead each day, and was finalized on 2 May. The following day the Ukrainians departed, and Fred’s diary for Tuesday 4 May reads, ‘Dawn of a new day!’ They fired the S8 rockets and the 12.7 Gatling gun. Compared to the GMPG, the thunder of the 12.7’s four-barrel Gatling gun, followed by the ground-breaking landing of the rounds, was a devastating weapon. Both Mi-24 gunships were ready for action a week after they were handed over to the Sierra Leone Government. And so the first part of the mission to go and purchase them as arranged and agreed the previous December at 3 am was finally successfully achieved.

  One of them was in action with ECOMOG forces right away, and CAO Tijjani Easterbrook described the results from the point when the rebels were in control of perhaps 85% of the country.

  The helicopters were deployed for operations and that changed the tide of the war and made the rebels have a rethink.20

  Juba co-ordinated all the information available on the enemy’s movements and did his planning accordingly to change the situation in favour of the Sierra Leone Government. He made use of the French fixed-wing pilot, JJ Fuentes, to do reconnaissance flights for him, and to report back the enemy positions and movements. He then decided what weapons were to be used on the gunship for the attacks; his idea was that the fixed-wing would also get airborne and obtain the latest information on rebel positions, and relay it to him by air in the gunship.

  At the time the rebels moved from the Port Loko area south-east, raping, killing and burning people alive in the villages, leaving the infrastructures completely destroyed with very few or no inhabitants alive.
It was a trail of devastation with bodies and body parts piled up in the roads of the villages − innocent citizens living in the bush minding their own business, getting slaughtered by savages. Some of these rebels that caused these atrocities were as young as 8 years. It is not something that people in the western world would believe or understand unless they were there to see the full impact of brutality. Sad to say that these rebels had strong support from the western world, but no big noise was made about it.21

  But he had the experience, and he now had the capability, to stop a rebel advance, with a force equivalent to a 1000 men moving at 300 kilometres an hour – the Mi-24. The first target he was given by JJ was a village where the rebels had already killed the villagers and were about to burn down the dwellings; when Juba got a visual on them they were between the houses, dashing for the dwellings to get cover. At 2 kilometres from target he stabilized the arms platform with the sight set just on floor level of the first houses and pressed the firing button, which in turn released 20 x S8 80mm rockets, and ‘within a break of a second adjusted the sight slightly higher to the centre of the village and released the second 20 x S8 rockets.’22 At this moment Juba had to break off from the attack to avoid flying over the village that was covered in black smoke with dust already rising up to 300 feet. As Juba returned to Freetown, JJ remained in the area to confirm the situation on the ground. His feedback, as well as that of the ground forces, was that that rebel group would not commit any more atrocities.

  Five similar attacks in the next 10 days throughout the country destroyed the entire killing force of the rebels and forced them to the Lomé accord, because their position of strength had all of a sudden disappeared like mist in front of the sun. The first and major agenda point was to get both Mi-24 grounded ASAP, but what they didn’t realize at the time was that I had only used one of the Mi-24s for these attacks. After these successes the bounty on my head from Liberia was raised to $5 million USD.23

  Juba by then, ‘had given Nellis his long awaited Mi-24 conversion, realizing the full implication of the power struggle Nellis had with me’ [an allusion to developing tension within the company], but was left with little choice to keep the momentum of the war against the rebels as the priority.

  The UN Special Envoy to Sierra Leone, Francis Okelo, confirmed to government officials that the RUF was very unhappy about the recent purchase of the gunships.24

  Forced to rethink by the government’s devastating air power, the RUF went again to the negotiating table, this time in Lomé, Togo to negotiations brokered by the Rev Jesse Jackson, President Bill Clinton’s special envoy. Foday Sankoh was released from prison in Freetown, after having been condemned to death for treason in October, and sat alongside President Kabbah, and was still able to convince – amid all evidence to the contrary – that the RUF really sought legitimate political recognition. The Lomé Agreement was signed by Kabbah and Sankoh in July, giving the RUF eight cabinet posts and Sankoh the position of Vice President, with responsibility for strategic resources. Given it was the lure of blood diamonds that fuelled rebel activity for ten years, Sankoh unbelievably gained what insurgency had failed to give, the sort of prize only associated with the board game, Monopoly – advance from the condemned cell in one move to State House, picking up all the diamonds you can gather.

  By November, RUF breaches of the cease fire agreement were causing alarm for the UN, which, the previous month, had established UNAMSIL, the UN Mission in Sierra Leone; it would be headed by General Vijay Jetley of India. All the signs pointed to the Lomé Agreement turning out to be the same con as the Abidjan Agreement of 1996; only this time the forces of democracy, under US pressure, had caved in even further.

  Juba recruited another pilot, Cassie Nel, who had been with him in 31 Squadron SAAF (South African Air Force) as he himself had other obligations to attend to, but all the flying he was doing was hampering him; and there was also the fact that Neall wanted some leave.

  As the new millennium approached, it was not high politics but good company that saw out the old year. High Commissioner, Peter Penfold had recommended for the award of MBE in the New Year’s honours (to some raised eyebrows back in the Foreign Office) Paddy Warren, owner of the popular bar, Paddy’s. Fred and the crew gathered in Paddy’s on 31 December, for the ceremony when Peter Penfold conferred the honour on this well-liked, former Merchant seaman who had stayed on when his ticket ended at Freetown. He had built up a popular bar and did a lot for his Sierra Leonean workers, making them partners in the enterprise; he was much respected, and in these stressful times, his establishment was a pleasant haven.

  The Memorial to David Stirling at Ochtertyre, Perthshire. Fred flew especially from Sierra Leone to attend the SAS Regimental Association unveiling ceremony. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Serving with Executive Outcomes, Fred, on the right, gathering his kit at Kono helipad, as he prepares to leave for Freetown with Col Karl Deats (centre) and Col Renier Hugo. (Jim Hooper collection)

  Executive Outcomes personnel after one of their operations. Fred is second from the right, Cobus Claassens on his right. (Cobus Claassens collection)

  Col Roelf van Heerden outside EO operations HQ at Koidu. (Jim Hooper collection)

  Fred leaving Koidu with Sierra Leone troops on the first leg of the assault on Gandorhun. (Jim Hooper collection)

  Col Renier Hugo leading the mortar team for the assault on Gandorhun. (Jim Hooper collection)

  After two days and nights on a hill near Gandorhun, EO operators wait to be airlifted out on Bokkie. (Jim Hooper collection)

  An injured little boy left to die by the rebels. Fred found him and handed him over to the Red Cross at Bo. (Fred Marafono collection)

  During a joint EO/SL army operation, Fred briefing a helicopter protection party at Bo. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Chief Hinga Norman and an EO officer inspect local militia. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Pete Flynn, his case packed for a quick departure, Fred and Hawah at Freetown Golf Club shortly before Pete flew home. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Fred and Chief Hinga Norman celebrate with a bottle of wine at Lagunda on the evening that Hinga Norman’s appointment as Deputy Minister of Defence for Sierra Leone was announced. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Positions of the Sierra Leone militia and ECOMOG bases that Juba Inc. linked, supplied and reinforced from Monrovia with Bokkie during the period of the AFRC junta. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Bokkie bringing VIPs to the ceremony at Freetown marking the restoration of democratic government. (Fred Marafono collection)

  British High Commissioner Peter Penfold with Kamajors in Bo, March 1998, after the restoration of Kabbah’s government. (Peter Penfold collection)

  Juba and Nigerian ECOMOG officers in Kono. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Peter Penfold being carried through the streets of Freetown as Paramount Chief. (Peter Penfold collection)

  With ECOMOG top brass: Gp Capt Tijjani Easterbrook, Chief Air Officer on the left with Juba and another Nigerian Air Force officer. Behind Tijjani’s right shoulder, Gen Timothy Shelpidi, the Force Commander; framed between Tijjani and Juba, Gen Abdul One Mohammed. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Fred, armed with a GPMG, on his way with Rick to bring out wounded from the besieged American embassy in Monrovia. (Rick’s collection)

  The killing fields of Freetown around Connaught Hospital when the rebels entered the capital in January 1999. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Innocent civilians bear witness to the barbarism of the rebels. (Fred Marafono collection)

  Inside an AN 124 transport plane, Juba’s procurement in the Ukraine for the government of Sierra Leone, a partially disassembled Mi-24 gunship and freight. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Rocket pods for the gunship in the AN 124 cargo. (Juba Joubert collection)

  The AN 124 arrival at Lungi with the gunships and ammunition. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Juba piloting with Fred as gunner, in one of th
e newly acquired Mi24 gunships, taking off from DHQ on the first mission against rebel positions. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Juba, Neall Ellis and team arriving in Bokkie to off-load the AN 124. (Juba Joubert collection)

  Fred, Chief Hinga Norman and Ft Lt Wakili at the helipad at Cockerill HQ. (Fred Marafono collection)