Sierra Leone ex-president returns after charges dropped

Ernest Bai Koroma, Sierra Leone’s former president, came back to Freetown on Sunday, arriving with two Nigerian dignitaries after treason charges against him were dropped.

Koroma touched down at the international airport alongside former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigeria’s foreign minister, Bianca Oduegwu-Ojukwu. Officials from Koroma’s opposition All People’s Congress party and Sierra Leone’s foreign minister, Mohamed Rahman Swarray, were on hand to receive him.

“Today I have come back home, and I’m happy,” Koroma told reporters.

The former leader had been in Nigeria since 2024, when he left for what was meant to be a three-month medical trip. He ended up staying for more than two years after being charged with treason over an alleged coup attempt.

Sierra Leone’s justice ministry dropped the charges in July without explanation. Koroma made a brief return that same month for an ECOWAS summit in Freetown at the invitation of President Julius Maada Bio. The charges against Koroma stemmed from a November 2023 attack in which armed men hit a military armoury, two barracks, two prisons and two police stations. Twenty-one people died in the violence, which authorities called a coup attempt.

A military court later sentenced two dozen soldiers and Koroma’s former bodyguard to between 50 and 100 years in prison for their roles in the mutiny.

Koroma, who was president from 2007 to 2018, returned just ahead of presidential elections scheduled for 2028.

SOURCE: AFP