W. African Rebels on Mutilation Rampage

The route to Connaught Hospital in the center of this West African capital is littered with the wreckage of war. Yet even hundreds of charred buildings and overturned vehicles provide little warning of what awaits inside.

“They shot my child,” said Sorie Swanweh, a 56-year-old driver. “I went to help him. They took me. They told me to lay my hand on the ground.”

Swanweh displayed his left arm, a stump soaked in iodine and wrapped in thick gauze. Then he swung his right arm menacingly through the air.

“Bam! Bam! Bam!” he narrated in a firm but hushed voice. “It took three chops.”

Swanweh’s adult son was left to die in the street. Their house was burned. Before moving on, the attackers relayed a brief message.

“They told me to go to the president and make my government give me a new hand,” said Swanweh, his blank gaze fixed on the nothingness beyond his bandage.

Rebel forces have been driven back to the outskirts of Freetown after their surprise attack in January nearly overran the teetering government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. At least 3,000 people are believed to have been killed in the brief but brutal contest for this bedraggled seaport, the latest round of terror in a protracted civil war.

The death toll, however, is only part of the horror.

Hospital officials and humanitarian groups here estimate that there are “many hundreds” of victims with crudely amputated arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet and other body parts--the grisly calling card of the anti-government Revolutionary United Front and its allies.

At the peak of the fighting, the rebels controlled most of eastern and central Freetown and had made aggressive inroads into the west. According to witnesses, they swept through eastern neighborhoods with machetes and axes in a mutilation binge intended to render the population hopeless and helpless.

A visit to the blue-tile lobby at Connaught Hospital, where dozens of amputees gather to trade their stories, is grim testimony to the rebels’ success.

“I was a driver, but no more,” Swanweh said. “What am I to do?”

Isolated Incidents Reported for Years

Isolated incidents of mutilation were reported for several years by Sierra Leonean refugees fleeing a conflict rooted in ethnic and regional rivalries, territorial ambition and competition for rich gold and diamond deposits.

The civil strife subsided after elections and a subsequent peace accord in 1996, but began again a year later when disaffected soldiers supported by the rebels ousted Kabbah.

Early last year, rebels and coup leaders were driven out of Freetown by an intervention force of West African troops, and Kabbah’s civilian rule was restored.

Humanitarian aid groups say the atrocities multiplied as dispirited rebels wreaked havoc across the countryside during and after their retreat.

Before the latest battle for Freetown, in January, about 500 cases of refugees with amputated limbs, ears and other body parts had been reported to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which provides shelter for about 500,000 Sierra Leonean refugees, the largest such population in Africa. Other humanitarian aid organizations and religious groups have reported as many as 1,000 such victims.

Rebel leaders have denied responsibility for the barbarism, including the most recent terror in Freetown, but international monitors say the evidence is overwhelming.

“We are witnessing one of the most unbelievable dramas,” said Zainoul Sanoussy, the interior minister in neighboring Guinea, who has seen 350,000 of the refugees flee to his country. “As the rebels become more desperate, they are using a campaign of terrorism . . . to remind the Kabbah government they are still there.”

Over a three-week period here in January, victims said, they were arbitrarily hauled off for amputations; among them was a 6-year-old girl who had her left arm severed with an ax. Many of those who were not mutilated were killed, raped or kidnapped.

More than 300 children were taken from their parents, international monitors say. An additional 800 children have been reported missing, most likely rounded up by the rebels for military duty or sex.

Terrified amputees said their torturers offered them the macabre choice of “short sleeves” or “long sleeves”--being cut above or below the elbow.

“We are nine [brothers and sisters] in our family, and we all have the same,” said Abiebatu Kay, 26. Her right hand was partially severed at the wrist, and her left hand was sliced across the palm but remains otherwise intact. Doctors have managed to reattach the right hand, although it is too early to tell whether it can be saved.

“They asked if I wanted short or long sleeves,” Kay continued, “but I did not say a word to them.”

Kay’s six children miraculously escaped the attack and now live with tens of thousands of other homeless residents in a dusty soccer stadium at the west end of town. Her nephew and niece were not so lucky. The 13-year-old boy and 17-year-old girl were carried off by the rebels and have not been seen since.

“There is no reason for this. I don’t know why they did it,” said Kay, whimpering as two of her sisters stood quietly at her side. “I don’t want revenge. I just want peace.”

Witnesses told U.N. monitors that some victims were selected during drug-induced games in which “executioners teasingly chose who to kill and who to spare,” according to a confidential U.N. report on atrocities committed during the January siege.

Victims Told to Show Off Captors’ Work

When the maiming was over, bloody survivors were sent off toward the city center and government-controlled western suburbs to show off their captors’ work.

“It is all about intimidation and instilling fear,” said Machiel Salomons, who heads the U.N. refugee protection program for Sierra Leone. “These guys are totally nuts.”

U.N. officials in Guinea, where humanitarian operations for Sierra Leone are based, said that more than 1,000 bodies found in Freetown after January’s fighting were missing limbs and other body parts. It is believed the victims either died from the maiming or were killed later during the rebels’ violent retreat.

Field workers with Handicap International, a French organization that counsels Sierra Leonean amputees, reported at least 400 new cases in the Freetown area.

A Connaught Hospital official suspects there are many more amputees among the 2,000 patients treated in the last two months for cuts and slashes, but hospital officials have been too busy to compile statistics.

“We’re still counting,” the official said.

Based on anecdotal evidence, doctors estimate that only a quarter of such amputees live long enough to get help or even be counted as victims.

“I saw a lot of chopped people all over, but I didn’t have the time to help them because I had to help my husband,” said Yerie Mansaray, 25. Her husband had both hands cut off in a rebel attack last year in the northern town of Kabala, but she and her children escaped unharmed. “We were all running. I had the two children too. I just started crying. I can’t say what happened to the others.”

One rebel woman named Adama has become so notorious among amputees now living in Guinea that she is known as Adama Cut Hand. Another rebel woman, U.N. officials say, is said to wear a necklace of amputated ears collected from her victims.

Young boys recruited by the rebels to perform menial tasks are also trained in mutilation, according to witnesses and victims.

The boys are typically given a brew of drugs, alcohol and gun powder--believed to increase their bravery and invincibility--and then sent off with axes and machetes.

Kay said about half the dozen or so attackers who maimed her family in January were teenage boys.

U.N. monitors report children as young as 8 were among the fighters who attacked Freetown.

The West African intervention force, known as ECOMOG, that eventually regained control of the city for the Kabbah government executed an 8-year-old boy, a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl fighting for the rebels, according to the confidential U.N. report.

“They indoctrinate the children and drug the children, and after one or two months, they go through an initiation process,” said Salomons, the U.N. refugee official, of the rebel forces. “To stop being a porter and be part of the gang, you have to show you can hack off a hand.”

In Conakry, the capital of Guinea, the U.N. refugee agency has helped set up an orthopedic center where amputees are fitted with artificial limbs and trained in simple tasks.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata, who visited the center last month, said the program is intended to inject hope into an otherwise desperate situation.

“These are the people who have been rescued,” Ogata said. “It is important to give hope for the time their country is normalized.”

Mohamed Barry, a 22-year-old student, was recently moved to the center from Freetown. He lost both hands last year when rebels attacked the provincial capital in central Sierra Leone, where he was visiting his parents. He also has a bulging scar where the rebels tried to cut off his ear.

“I had to watch as they killed my mother and father,” Barry said softly, his words interrupted by low, broken cries. “I started to cry when they cut my mother’s throat. They said they cut my hands off because I cried.”

Barry has been fitted with leather straps and hooks that allow him to hold a pencil. He has found a friend who helps care for him. But when he is asked about the future, his sad eyes grow frightened and his turned-down mouth starts to quiver.

“I am afraid to go back to Sierra Leone,” he said. “I want to go anywhere else but home.”