Former Junta Soldiers Release 216 Hostages in Sierra Leone

A nearly weeklong hostage crisis ended Tuesday when former junta soldiers freed their remaining prisoners after receiving assurances they would not be prosecuted, a top government official said.

The rogue rebels released 15 West African intervention force soldiers and a U.N. military observer, along with 200 civilians taken prisoner during this West African nation’s brutal eight-year civil war, Information Minister Julius Spencer said at a news conference.

“All the hostages have been released,” Spencer said. “The hostage drama is over in Sierra Leone.” The freed hostages were on their way to Freetown, the capital, and had radioed from a government-controlled checkpoint, Spencer said.

He also said the government had given permission for a plane chartered by Liberian President Charles Taylor to pick up four senior officers from the former junta and fly them to Monrovia, the Liberian capital, where junta leader Lt. Col. Johnny Paul Koroma now lives.

The kidnappers had demanded food and medical supplies, along with the release of Koroma, who they claimed was detained by Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels. Koroma has denied that he is a prisoner.

Asked if supplies would be provided to the soldiers, Spencer said: “We are asking aid agencies to provide food and medicine to the area. If [the soldiers] are around, and they hand in their weapons, maybe food and medicines will get to them eventually.”

About 35 U.N. military observers, aid workers, journalists and West African soldiers were captured last Wednesday. The hostage-taking threatened this country’s fragile peace and highlighted the divisions between the United Front rebels and their allies in the former junta.