Fwd: The United States secret prison dungeons in Sierra Leone

[Dr. Valentine Ojo]

----- Original Message -----

From: "julien ABALO" <freed...@yahoo.fr>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 9:22 PM
Subject: US SECRET PRISONS IN SIERRA LEONE

Public Statement.

Topic: 'UNITED STATES SECRET PRISON DUNGEONS IN SIERRA
LEONE'.

To: The International Media.
Date: 20th. April 2007.

From: ALIMAMY BAKARR SANKOH, Chairman and leader of
the Sierra Leone People's Democratic League (PDL); and
Presidential Aspirant for the position of President of
the Republic of Sierra Leone.

When a state is steering along the designs and tastes
of the big mafia, the people become automatically a
pariah entity that is exposed to all sorts of insults,
mockery and public scorn. This is true of the
situation in Sierra Leone today, where the mafia rule
introduced in the country's body politics has brought
untold sufferings, hardships and embarrassments for
the people. It has also inflicted painful wounds and
scars on the county's integrity, and tainted its image
to the outside world.

As the campaign for the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of the neighbouring dictator Lansana
Conte's forces out of Eastern Sierra Leone, and ending
years of unmandated, unwanted brutal aggression and
occupation of our beloved country heightened, another
disturbing development has unfold, with the DISCOVERY
OF UNITED STATES SECRET PRISON DUNGEONS in the
occupied Sierra Leonean Eastern town of Yenga and its
surrounding areas. The facts of this credible
information were gathered after four years of intense
investigations.

Being a concerned Sierra Leonean and someone aspiring
to become the next legitimate President of Sierra
Leone, I find it totally unacceptable to allow any
part or parts of Sierra Leone's sovereign territory to
be used either a torture land or land for
dehumanisation of foreign nationals. With this
development in the occupied towns and villages of
Eastern Sierra Leone, I demand explanation from the
Bush Administration in Washington about its role in
the illegal occupation of our country. My fellow
country men and women, and the larger international
civilised community would also want to know why Sierra
Leone the choice for torture, secret and squalid
prisons and disappearances of foreign nationals, on
mere suspicion that they are agents of the Lebanon
based Hezbollah group.
It must be recalled that in February and March of
2003, the Sierra Leonean President, Mr. Ahmed Tejan
Kabbah signed two letters and addressed to President
George Bush in Washington. The contents therein those
letters were about an alleged allegation that some
Muslim business people in the Sierra Leonean diamond
rich Kono district belong to the Lebanon based
Hezbollah group. Mr. Kabbah alleged also that these
Muslim traders in that part of the country were in the
diamond trade to generate funds to boast the terror
activities of the Hezbollah against Israel.
By June of the same year, President Bush sent a team
of CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigation) to the area, to investigate
the alleged complaints. The visiting United States
team of security men and women and their Sierra
Leonean counterparts did not find any traced of
Hezbollah presence in Sierra Leone, let alone in the
said diamond rich areas. But some Lebanese and Sierra
Leonean business men were picked and taken away on
board two United Nations peace keeping helicopters to
unknown destination.
This incident was recorded by the Pakistani
contingents of the United Nations Peace Keepers in
Sierra Leone at the time, which was also reported by
the Pakistani based 'The NATION' newspaper.
After four years of intense traces and investigations,
with the recent discovery of US secret prisons in the
country, there is every reason to believe that, the
business men kidnapped in Kono may be languishing in
these illegal US dungeons. One can also conclude from
evidence gathered in our investigations why the
Guinean forces still occupying our country illegally,
without action or a word of condemnation by the
international community.
I am worried because, if the government of President
Kabbah can be so wicked to the people of Sierra Leone,
that it cannot provide security for the ordinary
person, let alone defending the sovereignty, territory
and integrity of the nation against external threat or
aggression, then the sanctity of governance is no
longer there. Because, the primary objective of an
elected government in office is to guarantee the
safety and security of life and property, in which the
government of Mr. Tejan Kabbah as failed to provide
since its inception, ten years ago. The current level
of control exercised by foreign security personnel
over national security issues brings to question where
is the sovereignty of Sierra Leone.
In my candid opinion, President Kabbah is not on it
alone, but with top Party gurus of the so-called
ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

None the less, I will personally appeal to my big
brother, Prime Minister Dr. Lansana Kouyateh in
neighbouring Guinea to publicly dissociate his
administration from the wholesale violation of the
sovereignty of Sierra Leone, and of international
human-rights law and the Geneva conventions that have
taken place in the last four years in the occupied
Eastern lands of our beloved country. I will
personally ask Prime Minister Kouyateh to withdraw all
Guinean troops out of Sierra Leone, and restore the
long time peaceful and harmonious relationship between
our two countries, but which have in recent time
suffered suspicion, malice and hatreds.

The "war on terror" is taking a terrible toll on
Muslim families and societies through a vast programme
of secret detention and torture. Much as I condemn
terrorism and all acts that constitute terror, I
cannot understand why the Bush doctrine of war against
terrorism should be tailored to annihilate whole
nations and peoples perceived as threat to the United
States geo-political hegemony. I am appalled to hear
what the government in Freetown has chosen this
dangerous journey, to taint the image of our country.
If for any just reason there should be a prison of
such nature in Sierra Leone, it has to receive the
blessing of the United Nations, which by all moral
justifications should lead the war against terror and
all terrorists.

The presence of US secret prisons in Sierra Leone in
my opinion sends two messages. First, America and its
allies are keen to spread/impose democracy on the rest
of the world then they have a responsibility to
respect other people's rights to exist as human
beings, and should live up to the Geneva convention
and democratic law. And second, the transformation of
African territories into secret prisons for the
kidnapping and treatment of foreign nationals in
sub-human fashion constitute axis of evil and
threatened peace and development on the continent.

My fear, which I know is causing restiveness among
Sierra Leoneans is that the Bush Administration may
attempt to repeat the blunders committed by his
predecessor, the late President Ronald Reagan in the
Mano River Union (MRU) triangle in 1981, by using
neighbouring Liberia to annex oil rich Sulima from
Sierra Leone. I know the SLPP would be more than
willing to give up those territories for peanuts.

With the above, I want to appeal to the international
community, the United Nations, European Union,
Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the African
Union, Arab League, human rights' groups, the media
and peace-loving people everywhere to exert pressure
on the Bush Administration in Washington, to close its
secret prisons inside Sierra Leone. I call upon the
international community to visit the areas in Eastern
Sierra Leone concerned with a view to arrest the
terrible human rights abuses taking place in those
secret prisons. The international community must also
prevail on the authorities in Conakry to withdraw all
Guinea forces out of Sierra Leone.

If need be, I am willing and ready to meet President
Bush and members of the US Senate and Congress to
discuss this issue and to present more evidence on
facts about the presence of secret US prisons in our
country. By this statement, I want to make it
abundantly clear to all citizens of America that I am
not anti America. What I am doing is to address some
of the problems facing Sierra Leoneans as a nation
today, problems of security and peaceful co-existence
with our neighbours. When I become elected President
of Sierra Leone, my administration will go further to
improve Sierra Leone's relationship with the US in
areas such as democracy, human rights, freedom and
rule of law, which are currently in Sierra Leone
lacking under the Tejan Kabbah dictatorship. My
Administration will play active role in the war
against terrorism by lobbying the United Nations to
take the lead.

Down with terrorism and all terrorists!
Down with the enemies of progress!

Signed:

Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh.

(end)

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[Tony Iyare]

Scorpionflakes

 

Daily Times of Nigeria

Tuesday, May 8, 2007.

 

Allegory of Wolfowitz’s spin doctor

 

By Tony Iyare

 

Learning the ropes like Goebbels, Hitler’s spin doctor, Nuhu Ribadu obviously over reached himself in his new role. No one is sure whether it is not part of an orchestrated global stunt to pull wool over the iniquities of a randy World Bank President.     

 

However, by the last count, none of  those who responded on the net to the spin by the lily livered chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on behalf of Paul Wolfowitz titled Why Wolfowitz should stay published in The New York Times of Tuesday, May 1 had spared his groin. I do not either.

 

But it further confirms my earlier stance that the brouhaha about this famed anti-corruption Czar is a mere storm in a tea cup. We seem to have clad him in borrowed robes, regularly decked him in epaulets in a questionable meteouric rise and allowed ourselves to be blurred by his usual television trials of state governors and other public officials.

 

I’m disturbed that the Nigerian political elite has either stolen or mismanaged close to $600 billion said to have been generated from oil resources in the last 45 years, but that is not enough for us to endorse Ribadu’s predilection to stand the rule of law on its head.  

 

Listen to his reason for providing an armour for the beleaguered Wolfowitz who is accused of topping the pay of his girl friend, also a staff of the World Bank:

“Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the

bank's energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He

is a champion of using international development institutions to deal

with some of the world's major problems. And he has been a steadfast

supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people

from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty,
 disease and early

death”.

Ribadu must be talking of a different World Bank and another Africa in space. In what concrete way has Wolfowitz contributed to “fighting poverty and improving human life” on the continent? With 70 per cent of its population living below one dollar and a Gross Domestic Product that is close to that of Belgium, one of the toddling European countries, Africa which has
 been enmeshed in blood skirmishes, remains the only continent that has not recorded any meaningful growth in the last 40 years.  The World Bank is largely culpable in this mess.

Take the example of Nigeria said to have shared N16 trillion between the three arms of government since 1999 but have been goaded through a process of ruination of its economy and the virtual strangulation of its people via the micro economic policies foisted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  That is why we have $43 billion in external reserves but over 70 per cent of the
 citizenry live below one dollar while life expectancy has taken a slide to 43 years. 

Even if Wolfowitz, the war monger whose hands drip of the blood of innocent Iraqis were a true friend of Africa, would that be the reason why we should absolve him and ask him to sin no more? 

Unfortunately Wolfowitz is not in Nigeria where Ribadu and his agency has become a mere pawn in the political chess game of President Olusegun Obasanjo against his enemies. And where your culpability in corruption cases is underscored by the willingness to deify Baba and his vaunted economic reform  

Also hear Wolfowitz’s spin doctor:

“When disgruntled lawmakers here tried to cut off our
 financing and

shut down critical aspects of our operation, a World Bank grant of $5

million allowed us to bring to closure important cases of political

corruption involving key members of Nigeria's ruling elite, including

members of the executive branch and
 Parliament”.

Little wonder the anti-corruption campaign of Ribadu is externally inspired and driven. I had long come to the conclusion that the agency was set up for other reasons but corruption. I was commissioned since August 2006 to carry out an investigation by the Nation newspapers in New York on the bribe scandal involving Halliburton and some prominent Nigerians in the TSKJ LNG train project.  

Thinking that Ribadu’s EFCC will be forthcoming on a scandal which has led to a court trial in France and investigations in Britain and the United States, I was wrong as my enquiries have been tossed from one official to the other. Mum has been the word.

All you get from Ribadu’s allegory is a man enamoured by the lure of Euro-Dollar from international funding agencies and the cozy ambience of five star hotels as he criss crosses world capitals, than one interested in tackling the sociological and
 philosophical basis of corruption in Nigeria. 

Wolfowitz has perverted the process and dragged the World Bank into a moral crisis. If the bank is serious about its campaign for transparency and accountability, Wolfowitz should go.   And we should help him with a requiem.         

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Iyare
Editor, Business Times,

Daily Times of Nigeria Plc,

3, Otunba Jobi Fele Way,

Alausa Business District, Ikeja,

Lagos, Nigeria.

Mobile Phone:: 234-803-304-6943, 234-702-809-1704,

Home Phone: 234-1-850-6335

E-mail: ehia...@yahoo.co.uk

Website: www.dailytimes-nigeria.com

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[Tony Iyare]