{"id":13115,"date":"2014-03-14T05:12:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T05:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/sierra-leone-s-war-leader-dies\/"},"modified":"2014-03-14T05:50:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-14T05:50:54","slug":"sierra-leone-s-war-leader-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/sierra-leone-s-war-leader-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leone’s War Leader Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

{{Sierra Leone’s ex-president and war-time leader Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has died at the age of 82 after a long illness.}}<\/p>\n

He died on Thursday afternoon at his home in the capital, Freetown, with his wife and close family members at his side, reports say.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Sierra Leone’s government said Mr Kabbah’s death was an “irreparable loss”.<\/p>\n

Mr Kabbah was praised for his leadership during and after Sierra’s Leone’s decade-long civil war.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands died in the conflict, with many more maimed and raped.<\/p>\n

The rebel Revolutionary United Front’s trademark was to hack off the hands or feet of their victims.<\/p>\n

The conflict officially ended in 2002 after foreign forces intervened to help defeat the rebels.<\/p>\n

‘Peace and stability’
\nMr Kabbah was first elected president in 1996, ending a decade of military rule. He was briefly ousted in a military coup the following year before being restored to power by a West African regional force.<\/p>\n

He won a landslide victory in the 2002 elections and was praised for maintaining peace and establishing democratic institutions, although he was also criticised for failing to tackle poverty.<\/p>\n

“If we are now enjoying peace and stability in Sierra Leone, there is no way President Kabbah could be dissociated from that,” government spokesman Abdulai Bayraytay said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Born in 1932, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah began his career in public service in 1959, rising to become the youngest permanent secretary in the country in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

He then spent 21 years working for the UN Development Programme, based in New York, Lesotho and Tanzania.<\/p>\n

In 2012 the UN-backed Sierra Leone war crimes court in The Hague convicted former Liberian leader Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting war crimes in the Sierra Leone civil war.<\/p>\n

He was the first former head of state convicted by an international court since the Nuremburg military tribunal of Nazis after World War II.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{Sierra Leone’s ex-president and war-time leader Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has died at the age of 82 after a long illness.}} He died on Thursday afternoon at his home in the capital, Freetown, with his wife and close family members at his side, reports say. In a statement, Sierra Leone’s government said Mr Kabbah’s death was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000050913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000050913,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13115.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000050913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13115"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13115"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}