Presidential candidate of Sierra Leone’s main Opposition has promised to institute an international lawsuit against neighbouring Liberian Government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf if he wins elections this November.
Julius Maada Bio was speaking at London’s Chatham House to the Royal Institute of International Affairs yesterday May 10th 2012 when he dropped the bombshell that he planned to institute a legal claim for reparations at International Court in The Hague against Liberia’s Government and other Governments he alleges were the ones behind Sierra Leoneans taking up arms to kill their fellow Sierra Leoneans.
Bio first of all lambasted sitting President Koroma for ignoring what Bio says is the importance of taking the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Government to international court.
Speaking of the recent Special Court verdict against former Liberia President Charles Taylor, Bio said; “The Court’s judgment has other far-reaching implications. Disappointingly, the current APC Government in Sierra Leone completely ignored this in their acknowledgement of the Court’s decision.”
Maada Bio then explains what he will do which the APC has not done by saying the verdict “offers a new window of opportunity to pursue a claim for reparations in the International Court of Justice at The Hague on behalf not only of Sierra Leone as a State but of all the victims of the war”.
Continuing, he said “The new Government I shall lead after the November elections shall make a claim of reparations on behalf of these miserable families against the delinquent states that assisted the rebellion of the RUF a matter of high priority. I pledge this as an obligation and a policy direction”.
Also, Bio who shares responsibility as a former top military junta government official in the brutal murders of several innocent persons, including a pregnant lady, made a statement concerning the Special Court verdict which many found ironical.
"It tells all serving Heads of State who commit international crimes against their subjects... that there is no hiding place for them anywhere anymore. Impunity in all its manifestations in state governance has been outlawed by international criminal law and shall no longer be tolerated no matter how high or low a government official may be," Julius Maada Bio, himself a former Head of State of a brutal, extrajudicial killing regime asserted yesterday.
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Newspaper in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
