Foday Saybana Sankoh

‘No surrender no negotiations’ is the view on the Freetown streets even among those who a month ago were pushing for a dialogue with RUF leaders and a pardon for leader Foday Sankoh who was convicted of treason in October and is now held under Nigerian guard in Conakry Guinea...

Conté's support for Freetown's elected president Ahmed Tejan Kabbah has been met with revenge attacks by rebels from Corporal Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front one of which killed ten people and burned 100 houses in Faranah region in early November...

For example in Sierra Leone at Revolutionary United Front leader Foday Sankoh’s treason trial at the High Court in Freetown the prosecution presented papers showing that Libya had helped fund the rebel war and given military training to rebels from several West African states...

The RUF has pledged to step up ‘Operation Spare No Soul' - its revenge attacks on civilian and military targets - unless its founder Corporal Foday Sankoh is released...

Amid dealing with their local coup plotters General Sani Abacha and Ikimi were infuriated to hear Koroma say in his year's-end broadcast that the 22 April handover date would not be met unless: the Revolutionary United Front leader Corporal Foday Sankoh was released from custody in Nigeria; the number of Nigerian troops in the Ecowas peacekeeping force (Ecomog) was sharply reduced; and the national Sierra Leonean army controlled the disarmament process...

Then Tejan Kabbah is to be reinstalled as part of an 'all- inclusive power-sharing' government which would recognise the continuing role of Foday Sankoh as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader...

More generally Koroma says he will reject the plan if Foday Sankoh currently held in Abuja Nigeria is not allowed to return to Sierra Leone...

Taylor also intended to ask Abuja to release his old ally Foday Sankoh of the Revolutionary United Front (now by a twist of fate allied with Kabbah)...

They were anyway sure to be refused admission and may have worried about RUF leader Foday Sankoh who visited Nigeria in 1996 and is still under house arrest there well clear of the summit...

Nigeria is detaining ex-Corporal Foday Sankoh leader of the Revolutionary United Front and an ally of the new largely unrecognised junta of Johnny Paul Koroma...

RUF influence is strong despite Foday Sankoh's continued detention in Nigeria...