Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, located in Freetown, Sierra Leone, has authority to prosecute "those who bear the greatest responsibility" for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and violations of Sierra Leonean law committed in Sierra Leone since November 30, 1996.

After Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah requested that the United Nations form a court to try those responsible, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1315 calling for the Secretary-General to begin discussions with the Government of Sierra Leone to create a Special Court. The Government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations signed an agreement establishing the Court on January 16, 2002.

The conflict in Sierra Leone began when the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), a group of renegade soldiers from the Sierra Leonean Army, overthrew the Government of Sierra Leone in 1997. The AFRC subsequently entered into an alliance and joined forces with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group that invaded Sierra Leone from Liberia in 1991, with support from Charles Taylor, who, at the time of the RUF invasion, was the leader of a Liberian armed faction known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. A third Sierra Leonean armed faction, the Civil Defense Forces (CDF), was a group of pro-government paramilitary forces that fought against the combined forces of the AFRC and the RUF.

All three Sierra Leonean armed factions-the AFRC, the RUF, and the CDF-are accused of war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law. Charles Taylor, who became President of Liberia in 1997, is accused of planning, instigating, ordering, and otherwise aiding and abetting war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed by the AFRC and RUF, or failing to prevent AFRC and RUF forces under his command and control from committing such crimes.-the RUF trial, the CDF trial, the AFRC trial, and the Charles Taylor trial. Eight leaders from the three armed factions are being tried in Freetown. A ninth leader died of natural causes in February 2007, after his trial concluded but before the judges delivered a verdict in the case. Pursuant to the Special Court's request, the United Nations Security Council agreed on June 16, 2006 to move the trial of Charles Taylor to The Hague for security reasons.

Although charged individually, the cases have been consolidated into four trials

On June 20, 2007, the judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone delivered a verdict in the AFRC trial, finding all three AFRC defendants guilty of 11 of the 14 counts charged in the indictment. The verdict in the CDF case is expected in July 2007, and the RUF trial is expected to conclude by the end of 2007, with a verdict to follow in the first half of 2008. The prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor commenced with the Prosecution's opening statement on June 4, 2007, in The Hague. The trial is expected to conclude by the end of 2008, with a verdict to follow in the first half of 2009.