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Johnny Paul Koroma 1989.
Johnny Paul Koroma was born in 1960 in the Kono District in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. Growing up in the capital, Freetown, he joined his country’s army in 1985, attended Sandhurst on course SMC 882 and was commissioned in April 1989. Returning to Sierra Leone, he served as a platoon and company commander before attending a command course in Ghana in 1994. Following further training in Nigeria, Koroma was heavily involved in the fight against the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels of Foday Sankoh, backed by Liberian President Charles Taylor, in the civil war that engulfed Sierra Leone.
In August 1996, Koroma was arrested for alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow and kill the democratically elected president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. However, on 25th May 1997, 17 junior soldiers from the Sierra Leone Army broke into Freetown central prison and freed Koroma, who took power in a military coup. As head of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), Koroma invited the leaders of the RUF to join him. During the previous six years of the civil war, the RUF had been held in check by a combination of the army and the Kamajors – local fighters loyal to Kabbah. However, once the RUF had unfettered access to the whole country, the level of violence against civilians exploded. Characterised by the short-sleeve/long-sleeve forced mutilation of hands or arms, this created over 60,000 amputees, around one percent of the entire population.
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