The head of the African Department in the Foreign Office had flown in, arriving after midnight, and flew out again before the end of the meeting. There was therefore very little time to exchange more than a few words between the sessions of the meeting. However, he told me that I was not to go back to Freetown. I should go and position myself in Conakry. I felt that I had been tricked into leaving Freetown. Andy and I flew to Conakry to join the other members of the team who had secured rooms at the Hotel Camayenne, but not room 503, which was unavailable. The team were disappointed to hear that we had been grounded and would not be going back to Freetown. Solomon and the staff back in Freetown were even more disappointed and apprehensive.
It was now New Year’s Eve. Alisdair had flown back to the UK to be with his wife. The close protection team and I joined Val Treitlein for dinner at the hotel. But I was in no mood to celebrate. Somehow it seemed wrong to be enjoying ourselves with so many friends back in Sierra Leone who were so fearful of what the New Year might bring. I left the table early and went up to my room. I did not know where Celia was so I could not telephone her. I went to bed not even waiting to see in the New Year.
Chapter Nine
Atrocities
So 1999 began with me sitting in the Hotel Camayenne in Conakry. I was without Celia, the situation in Sierra Leone was confused and there was no indication when I would be back in Freetown. It all had a familiar ring.
I saw little point in sitting it out in Conakry this time. The government to which I was accredited was back in Freetown. If I was going to get back, I would have to exert pressure on those in London and I could do this more effectively face to face. I made plans to fly back to London.
Freetown itself remained quiet. There were indeterminate numbers of rebels close by and they had mounted an attack on Hastings, but Ecomog claimed to have driven them back. New Year celebrations had been subdued. Businesses and shops were open but there were not the usual crowds on Lumley Beach. More of the international community had arrived in Conakry, including the British officers attached to the UN force. Francis Okelo and General Joshi, head of the UNOMSIL forces, remained in Freetown to fly the international flag.
I spoke to Solomon in the High Commission and told him that I proposed to return to the UK to attend meetings there but I still hoped to be back in Freetown as soon as possible. He was somewhat discouraged by the news but confirmed that the staff, the compound and the residence were fine. The close protection team and I caught the Air France flight to Paris on 2 January and made a connection to Heathrow, but minus our baggage (WAWA in Paris!). I drove out to our empty house at Abingdon.
I went into the Foreign Office the next day to attend a Whitehall meeting to assess the situation. There was still much concern but now, with the High Commission closed, our information was sketchy. No decision could be made about our return; we would have to continue to monitor events but from afar.
I stayed at home the next day and went in again on the Wednesday the 6th. I telephoned the High Commission from the Foreign Office. Solomon had not got into the office and according to Christian, who was manning our switchboard, there were signs of fighting in Freetown. Other phone calls to friends in Freetown confirmed this. I decided to go back to Abingdon. Most people in Freetown, including the President, had my home telephone number and it seemed to me that it would be better if I were back there to receive any calls. The next four to five days were to be spent almost continuously on the telephone piecing together the dramatic events that were unfurling in Freetown.
January 6 Rebel Invasion of Freetown
The rebels struck Freetown on the morning of 6 January. Within a very quick time they had occupied large parts of the city. It later became clear that over the previous weeks they had infiltrated large numbers into Freetown, so that when the force moved in from the east there were substantial numbers already inside the city. Early on they took over one of the local radio stations, Radio 96.2 Voice of the Handicapped, and a Colonel Sesay announced that they had taken over State House in the centre of town. These announcements were short-lived. One of the Ecomog alpha jets dropped a bomb on the station and put it off the air. On Radio Democracy 98.1 Julius Spencer was announcing that Ecomog was in control but people should stay indoors. His was the only voice of government that people heard.
The rebels made their way through the eastern parts of the city, Wellington, Calaba Town and Kissy. They ordered people out of their homes and told them to tie white bands around their heads and sing and dance in support for them. The people were being used as human shields to prevent Ecomog from firing upon the rebels. This was how so many of the rebels had entered that morning, pushing the displaced civilians ahead of them. The Ecomog troops, though in good defensive positions, withdrew rather than fire upon the innocent civilians.
Most of the rebels were former members of the Sierra Leone army who had supported the AFRC rather than members of the RUF and initially they seemed to be content to merely encourage the people to sing and dance in support for them. But as more numbers arrived, including RUF supporters, the situation turned nastier and the awful atrocities started.
It was to be some time before a full picture would emerge of what happened during what was ten days of hell for the people of Freetown. Because of the numbers who had infiltrated the city during the previous weeks, the rebels had very quickly made their way through much of the city. Ecomog were in some disarray and government went to ground.
In the face of the Ecomog collapse and urged on by James Jonah and others, President Kabbah contacted General Abubakar in Abuja and requested that Maxwell Khobe, now promoted to general, be put in charge of the Ecomog forces. Abubakar agreed. As he had done in the February before, General Khobe led his men from the front. He stiffened the resistance and it was finally at the Congo Cross roundabout in the western end of the city that the rebels were halted by a combination of Ecomog and Civil Defence Forces. They started rolling the rebels back out of the city. The rebels continued to commit their atrocities on the civil population as they fled. Although the rebels had only occupied the centre of the city for less than one week, it took Ecomog and the CDF forces over three weeks to flush them out from the densely populated eastern suburbs of Kissy, Wellington and Calaba Town. It was in these three areas, particularly towards the end of the occupation, that the worst of the atrocities occurred.
Atrocities
The rebels’ incursion into Freetown had been built around the use of civilian human shields. As they began their advance the rebels used gunfire to create panic and produce a mass civilian exodus towards the centre of the city. The rebels then mixed in and marched behind the thousands of civilians making up the human shield. These tactics were effective for the rebels, but proved frustrating for the Ecomog soldiers who were unable to identify and thus properly engage the enemy. It was deadly for the civilians who were in the line of fire once the shooting began.
Upon gaining control of an area the rebels carried out systematic looting raids in which families were hit by wave after wave of rebels demanding food, money and valuables. Those who didn’t have what the rebels demanded would be killed and even those who gave up their meagre possessions were also often murdered. Just resisting rape or abduction, trying to escape or trying to protect a family member or friend, could lead to being butchered in the most horrific manner. Hundreds of dead bodies were left lying around the streets.
There were frequent accounts of people being burned alive in their houses. Children and the elderly were particularly vulnerable. Several organisations, but especially Human Rights Watch through the remarkable work of its representative, Corinne Dufka, were to record these gruesome acts in a report entitled ‘Getting away with Murder, Mutilation and Rape’. Witnesses described to her scenes of rebels throwing children into burning houses and shooting at those who tried to escape. Family members trying to rescue their children or other relatives from a burning house were threatened with death and forced to abandon them to the fir
e. Another remarkable Sierra Leonean, Sorious Samura, a television cameraman, managed to film some of these atrocities and he was later to produce a graphic documentary, Cry Freetown, which won several international awards. Much of what he filmed was considered too gruesome to show on British television, even late at night.
One of the Kamajor leaders, who I knew, was heavily involved in pushing the rebels back. Leading a small group of Kamajor and Ecomog troops he was constantly making forays around parts of the city to try and halt the rebel advance. At one stage he came across a group of three rebels who were forcing a family out of their house. One of the rebels, dressed in army trousers and a stained T-shirt with a white bandana around his head, was holding up a baby by its legs in one hand and holding a machete in the other. As if he was slicing meat off a stick, the rebel swung the machete and decapitated the baby. My friend shot the rebel dead and another who was standing by watching this gruesome act with a grin on his face. The third rebel escaped.
The largest number of killings took place within the context of attacks on civilians gathered in houses, compounds and places of refuge such as churches and mosques. A study carried out by MSF (Médicins Sans Frontières) at the Connaught hospital found that some eighty per cent of all war wounded were survivors of mass killings and massacres. Human Rights Watch took testimonies from scores of witnesses to such atrocities including a 6 January attack on a family in which all but one of their seven children were killed, a 19 January attack on the church of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star in Wellington, in which twelve people were gunned down, a 21 January attack on a compound in Kissy in which seventeen people were murdered and later burned, and a 22 January attack on the Rogbalan Mosque in Kissy in which sixty six people were massacred in cold blood.
Hundreds of people had hands, arms, legs and other parts of the body hacked off by the rebels. Many of the perpetrators of these atrocities were children, often high on drugs, some of them barely capable of carrying their AK47s, but still deadly in using them. In one incident over twenty people were lined up with their hands held out and a couple of rebels who could not have been older than sixteen went along the line and systematically hacked off the outstretched hands with rusty machetes. Other civilians were forced to plunge their hands in vats of boiling oil.
Throughout the occupation the rebels perpetrated organized and widespread acts of rape against girls and women. The sexual abuse was frequently characterized by extreme brutality and often committed right in front of husbands and parents. Young girls, especially virgins, were specifically targeted.
Countless hundreds of people, especially children, were abducted. They included Archbishop Ganda, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Freetown, along with six nuns (Sisters of Charity) and four priests. Four of the nuns were murdered and one of the priests wounded.
As the rebels withdrew from the capital they set entire city blocks and suburban streets on fire. Eighty per cent of Calaba Town was left in ashes and sixty-five per cent of the densely populated Kissy was totally destroyed. Many factories were put to the torch thus destroying thousands of jobs. Diplomatic premises such as the Nigerian and United Nations offices, government buildings, mosques, churches and several notable historical landmarks were all damaged, including Freetown’s main market built in 1802, and the beautiful Holy Trinity Church on Kissy Street built in 1877.
In all, two thirds of the city was damaged, one in three of the population were displaced and made homeless, and it is reliably estimated that 5 – 7,000 people were killed in the orgy of death and destruction. And yet there was hardly a peep from the international community, who instead criticized the Ecomog and CDF forces for human rights violations.
Back in the UK I remained unaware of the full extent of the atrocities. For the first couple of days I was constantly on the telephone from Abingdon, talking to people in Freetown and to friends in the UK who were also talking to others in Freetown, as we struggled to keep abreast of events. None of the staff had made it to the compound, which meant that Christian was all on his own in the office, with just our local guards outside. I spoke to him every few hours. Each time he said that he was OK, though from time to time the shooting had come close. We were later to discover that the rebels got as close as Wilberforce village just around the corner from the compound and also half way up the hill leading to the residence.
After a couple of days the telephones went off. The rebels had attacked the Sierratel offices and shot two of the employees, which led to the others fleeing. Now we could only speak to a handful of people in Freetown who had satellite telephones. This meant that we were cut off from the office. I became increasingly concerned for our staff and other friends in Freetown.
No one was spared, young and old, rich and poor, but I was especially concerned about the members of staff who lived in the centre and eastern end of the city – Cecilia, my secretary, Osman and Alimamy, from the residence, Brima, our accountant, and several of the guards. I had long been a particular target for the rebels. We had intercepted several messages from people like Bockarie and other rebel leaders indicating that, whatever else they achieved, they should kill me and burn down the High Commission. I was not prepared to be intimidated by these threats but I was angry that they should extend to Sierra Leone members of my staff. Many of them had to burn their British High Commission identity cards and any other evidence of their links to the High Commission, such as photographs of me presenting them with their certificates for loyalty and service during the previous troubles.
When the rebels struck on 6 January, Francis Okelo, Subash Joshi and the few remaining members of the United Nations Observer Mission to Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) team managed to get out to Conakry by helicopter; apart from one member of the team, Mike Booth, an American, who found himself trapped in the UNOMSIL offices, which were later burnt down by the rebels. He was to emerge in Conakry some time later, badly traumatized. Several expatriates were stuck such as Paddy Warren, the colourful owner of Paddy’s Bar, to be featured in a BBC documentary, Chris Robertshaw, one of our wardens, Michael Moss, with the Methodist Church, and Hank and Catherine Meyer. Hank, a Dutch national, was the Honorary Belgian Consul.
One of my predecessors as British High Commissioner, Derek Partridge, had returned to Freetown for Christmas and had been staying with Hank and Catherine. Derek had been High Commissioner from 1976 to 1981. After Sierra Leone, he had retired from the Diplomatic Service and had become a Liberal councillor in Rotherhithe, South London. Derek had developed a strong attachment to the country and stayed in touch with a number of friends, including Patrick, his driver at the time at the High Commission. Derek had given me much moral support during the Sandline enquiries, often writing to the UK newspapers to offer some words of experience. I had kept in close touch with Derek in the days before the evacuation at Christmas briefing him on everything we knew about the situation. He felt very strongly that London had overreacted in announcing an evacuation before Christmas. He recorded an interview with BBC Focus on Africa saying so. After my departure I had kept in touch with him from Conakry. As the warning signs began to increase after the New Year I told him that I really thought that it was now time for him to leave. Derek had flown out on the charter flight with me before Christmas and so, like all the others who had come out on that flight, he was now stranded because the charter company had refused to send their plane back. The company considered that if it was necessary to send in the RAF to evacuate people, then it was not safe to send back their civilian plane. Derek managed to get to Banjul and from there flew back to London just as the rebels were entering Freetown. We continued to keep in touch with one another back in the UK.
Some attempts were being made to call for a ceasefire. Moses Anafu of the Commonwealth Secretariat rang to say that he had been in touch with Bockarie, but the latter was defiant and confident of overthrowing the government. Both Sankoh, who had been whisked off to one of the Nigerian naval vessels as the rebels entered Freetown, and President Kabbah c
alled for a ceasefire. Bockarie refused to adhere to it. We expressed concern about the situation and announced that HMS Norfolk was being sent to the area, though it was not clear what she was expected to do.
On 13 January I flew back to Conakry, arriving without my baggage. I met with Francis Okelo. He had just been into Freetown for the day to assess the situation and to meet with President Kabbah. The latter had also taken refuge with the Nigerians, but was now back in Hill Station Lodge. Looking down on the city from the veranda of the lodge, Francis described a scene like that in the Hollywood movie Quo Vadis where Peter Ustinov playing Nero looks down on Rome burning below. The Freetown version had a modern component – military Alpha Jets flying overhead. The situation was very grim, little power, no water, no telephones, food in short supply, hundreds of bodies lying around the streets and thousands of displaced people, many of them taking shelter in the Chinese-built national football stadium.
Atrocities, Diamonds and Diplomacy Page 18