Sierra Leone - January 2024

On 3 January, four charges were filed against former president Ernest Bai Koroma, including treason, misprision of treason and the crime of  “harbouring”. Charges were also filed against eleven others on the same day, including one person who had been a bodyguard to Mr. Koroma. The charges relate to an outbreak of violence in November 2023, in which hundreds of inmates were freed from the central prison in Freetown, and 18 members of the security services were killed. The government described the violence as an attempted coup d’état. The charges, and the allegations of an attempted coup, follow on from the disputed election result in June 2023, in which current President Julius Maada Bio’s Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) was declared the winner of the elections (by the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone) over Dr Samura Kamara, the candidate of the All People’s Congress (APC), the party of former president Koroma. The election appeared to fall short of international standards for electoral integrity.

Sources: Africa News, British Broadcasting Corporation, Deutsche Welle