Foday Sankoh, 65; Led Sierra Leone Rebels Notorious for War Crimes

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone â€”  Foday Sankoh, an indicted Sierra Leone war criminal whose rebel forces were notorious for dismembering thousands of civilians, died in U.N. custody at a Freetown hospital, the war crimes court said Wednesday. He was 65.

Sankoh died late Tuesday, said David Hecht, spokesman for the U.N.-Sierra Leone war crimes court. No cause of death was given, but Sankoh reportedly had suffered a mild stroke after his capture in early 2000 and had been ill and disoriented.

Sankoh’s death from natural causes granted him “a peaceful end that he denied to so many others,� said a statement from the office of the court’s chief prosecutor, David Crane, an American. Prosecutors promised a post-mortem to determine Sankoh’s exact cause of death.

A former commercial photographer and Sierra Leone soldier, Sankoh trained in the Cold War guerrilla camps of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. His companions there included Charles Taylor of neighboring Liberia -- also indicted by the United Nations as an alleged principal culprit in the 10-year Sierra Leone terror campaign.

Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front, founded in Libya in 1988-89, launched the insurgency in 1991, bent on winning control of Sierra Leone’s government and diamond fields. Sankoh’s followers, many of them mere boys, knew him only as “Pa.�

His drugged, drunk rebels became notorious for killing, raping, maiming and kidnapping tens of thousands of civilians. Prosecutors estimated the total death toll of the 10 years of carnage at 75,000.

Sankoh was captured in early 2000 after his fighters had gunned down more than a dozen protesters outside his Freetown home. He had been in U.N. custody in prisons and hospitals since.

Forceful military intervention by Britain, Guinea and the United Nations crushed the rebels, and Sierra Leone formally declared the war over in early 2002 and soon after held peaceful elections. Sankoh’s rebel group stood candidates for parliament, but received no seats.

A roughly 13,000-strong U.N. force -- the body’s largest deployment worldwide -- is guarding Sierra Leone’s fragile peace.

Sankoh faced a 17-count indictment before the war crimes court as well as separate charges in a Sierra Leone national court.

Authorities said in October 2002 that he had suffered what they first called a mild stroke.

The war crimes court said in June that it was pursuing a waiver on a U.N. travel ban against Sankoh so he could be sent outside Sierra Leone for treatment.

The court statement released Wednesday after Sankoh’s death said prosecutors still would attempt through other war crimes trials to establish his “involvement in the atrocious deeds that have left a legacy of horror in the minds and memories of those who survived.�