Sierra Leone ‘coup’ leader sentenced to 182 years in prison

A court in Sierra Leone has found 11 people guilty of treason and other offences after what authorities called an attempted coup.

Their leader has been sentenced to almost 200 years in prison, a judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday.

In November, dozens of gunmen broke into the country’s armoury and into a prison where the majority of the more than 2,000 inmates were freed.

The clashes left 18 security forces dead.

Authorities at the time said they arrested about 80 people, and a dozen were charged in January, including former president Ernest Bai Koroma, later granted medical leave.

The man accused of leading the attack, Amadu Koita Makalo, was sentenced on Monday to 182 years in prison on charges of treason, murder and shooting with intent to murder, the judiciary’s spokesman, Moses Lamin Kamara, told the Associated Press.

Makalo is an ex-bodyguard of Mr Koroma and has been a vocal critic of the current president, Julius Maada Bio, on social media.

The other 10 were also found guilty of treason and murder and received lengthy prison sentences ranging from 30 to 112 years.

Although officially retired from politics, Mr Koroma remains an influential figure within his political party.

Many of those arrested in connection to the attack were former associates of the ex-president, information minister Chernor Bah told the AP.

There have been political tensions in Sierra Leone since Mr Bio’s re-election last year in a vote that the opposition claimed was rigged in his favour.

Two months after he was re-elected, police said they arrested several people, including senior military officers, planning to use protests “to undermine peace”.

Sierra Leone is still healing from an 11-year civil war that ended more than two decades ago and its population of eight million people is among the poorest in the world.

Neighbouring Guinea remains politically unstable after a coup in 2021.