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| WIMAM ADMINISTRATION 2006 - 2008 |
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| PRESIDENT Mamadee Konneh |
| VICE PRESIDENT Assata Sheriff |
| SECRETARY GENERAL Morris M. Kromah |
| Abraham Kromah Speech WIMAM Inauguration |
| ANNOUNCEMENTS |
| Let us come together as one and let go our differences. By: Mr. Mamadee Konneh, WIMAM's President, July 9, 2006 |
It has been said and as we all are aware, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”. Why can't we be good listeners and allow others to express their opinions? I would like to point out some issues that are affecting our community, and my administration will do every thing to solve this dispute if Allah’s agree. |
| Sierra Leone convicts 3 of war crimes |
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| By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 20, 4:25 PM ET Three former Sierra Leonean military leaders were found guilty of war crimes Wednesday by a U.N.-backed court — the first verdicts from the country's civil war and the first convictions in an international court for using child soldiers. The court found the three defendants guilty of 11 of 14 charges, including terrorism, using child soldiers, enslavement, rape and murder. The three were acquitted of charges of sexual slavery, "other inhumane acts" related to physical violence, and acts related to sexual violence, said Peter Andersen, spokesman for the Sierra Leone Special Court. The ruling marks the first time an international court has issued a conviction on the conscription of child soldiers — a practice made notorious by images of drugged elementary-school-age boys wielding automatic weapons in the regional conflict. The Sierra Leone tribunal was set up following the end of fighting in 2002 to prosecute the worst offenders in a war that ravaged the small West African nation and also consumed neighboring Liberia. The court has indicted 12 people, including former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is charged with backing Sierra Leonean rebels. The three defendants convicted Wednesday in Freetown had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which linked them to fighters who raped women, burned villages, conscripted thousands of child soldiers and forced others to work as laborers in diamond mines. Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu were indicted in 2003 as the alleged leaders of the junta, called the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. The group of former military officers toppled Sierra Leone's government in 1997 and then teamed up with rebels to control the country until 1998, according to the indictment. The judge read the ruling three times — once for each defendant as the accused stood. The men, all in suits and ties, showed little emotion during the verdict-reading and then bowed their heads. Sentencing is scheduled for mid-July. The gallery was filled with about 200 people, including the defendants' relatives, military officials, police officers and the general public. David Crane, the founding prosecutor of the Sierra Leone Special Court, called the ruling a watershed moment for human rights. "It's a huge moment for children around the world who have been oppressed in these conflicts," said David Crane, a law professor at Syracuse University. "This particular judgment sets the cornerstone forever — those who recruit children into an armed force are criminally liable." Although children have been used in wars throughout history, experts say the recruitment and conscription of children reached a new level in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia. In Liberia, Taylor's men are accused of organizing the so-called Small Boys Unit, which conscripted youngsters who were armed with machine guns and baptized them with names like Babykiller. In Sierra Leone, the proportion of child soldiers to the general population was particularly staggering, with about 30,000 children fighting in a country with a population of about 6 million, said Enrique Restoy, who oversees the region for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, an advocacy group. "It's the first place in the world that the use of children became obvious, and was seen everywhere," said Restoy said. The group led by the three men committed their worst atrocities after they were pushed into the bush by an international peacekeeping force in 1998, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch. It was then that they started "punishing the civilian population as a whole," said Dufka, an expert on the conflict. It is estimated that about a half-million people were victims of killings, systematic mutilation and other atrocities in Sierra Leone's conflict, in which illicit diamond sales fueled years of devastation. Some have criticized the Special Court for not progressing through trials quickly enough. Three of those charged have died since the indictments — two of natural causes and one in a killing that many believe was a move to silence him. Five others are awaiting verdicts. Taylor's trial opened earlier this month in The Hague, Netherlands. It was being held outside Freetown because of fears the case could trigger fresh violence, but it remained under the auspices of the Sierra Leone court. Taylor's case was being heard in a room rented from the International Criminal Court. Taylor is also linked to brutality in his own country, but Liberians have opted for a truth and reconciliation commission rather than a court. Others cases involving child soldiers are pending at the international court. It has ordered a Congolese warlord to stand trial for recruiting children and issued arrest warrants for Ugandan rebel leaders accused of using child fighters. Associated Press Writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal. |
| Source: Associated Press |