By Umaru Fofana
It was all panning out like a Hollywood movie. Let us call it WILD WEST GANGSTERISM. It involves an arms dealer who decides to reside in one of his victim countries. He has not restarted his life by changing his name or bidding farewell to his old lifestyle. No, quite the contrary! He uses the same name as is on a UN travel ban list. He rents a huge complex in the country and lives there unperturbed. At least up to a point. He does so for years despite the UN travel ban, despite his photograph being on the INTERPOL website, and despite him being declared WANTED by the world police.
It takes a UN panel of experts on and in another country to follow a lead that brings them into the new country of residency of this central character. He is spotted. He is called on the phone. And he owns up to his name. His address is investigated. And it is authenticated. He cannot care less. To hell with the UN, he must have murmured. It seems on good account.
He is living in the paradise he once successfully turned into hell. There is sand, there is sea and there is sex. He has access to them all. So he does dollars. And he is making a lot more. Almost effortlessly. A perfect scene and an imperfect life that makes the French mercenary Bob Denard or the British counterpart Simon Mann green with envy. Here he still trades in arms. Still recruits mercenaries. Still rich in dollars. He apparently easily compromises a society that is very susceptible to the C-word. So he finagles his way through. Sadly it turned out to be real life.
It is now official: The president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma did sign an expulsion order for the fugitive Senegalese national wanted in Sierra Leone for crimes against the president’s own people, according to the Sierra Leone Police. In what looks like one of the most tragic ironies of our time, the government still argues that the order was signed “in the interest of the people of Sierra Leone”. How strange!
Ibrahim Bah, aka Ibrahim Baldeh, has for a decade or so been banned from travelling by the United Nations. Members of a United Nations panel of experts were unequivocal, and explained with specific details that Baldeh had been busy in Sierra Leone, recently, recruiting mercenaries for Libya and Ivory Coast and possibly elsewhere. If all of that went unnoticed then it is a serious indictment on our security services that such a man could have done all of that here unnoticed. Otherwise he could only have done so in cahoots with the police. Yet the government of Sierra Leone says Baldeh posed no threat to Sierra Leone. This, despite the UN Panel warning that the fugitive and a Liberian associate of his are capable of destabilising the region.
The UN slammed a travel ban on Baldeh, believe it or not, because he is believed to have committed or aided and abetted the commission of heinous crimes against the people of Sierra Leone. In fact, even before the recent furore over the fugitive, thanks to human rights groups and some sections of the media, Baldeh had been living in Sierra Leone as a businessman and, if you believe the UN, a supplier of arms and men under arm. Exactly those things he allegedly committed during Sierra Leone’s rebel war when he was said to be a close confidante of the then-president of Liberia, Charles Taylor. Now, by his own admission, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Frank Kargbo advised President Koroma to let Baldeh go. And here is what is more troubling.
After the UN experts had painted the grim accounts of Baldeh the police were scandalised into arresting him. They prevaricated about whether or not the man being held was the man banned from travelling by the UN. In the end, and rather dubiously, they granted him bail under conditions which were never made known. Nor do we still know who came forward as his surety. Government said they did not have the resources to try him. Interesting!
Now, in early July a local rights group, Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) and their Swedish partners, Civitas Maxima filed a suit on behalf of some victims of Baldeh’s alleged atrocities. We were told a few weeks ago that the matter would come before a magistrate court for preliminary investigations. We were all around the law courts building as is typical of curious journalists. Then came word that it would be assigned to the Pademba Road court. We went there in droves. It turned out, rather strangely, that it had not been assigned. A few weeks later, we were alerted to it again. It turned out to be a hoax. Or maybe not! Recent developments tend to suggest that something fishy was probably being carried out. Then few more days elapsed. The matter was assigned. No Baldeh in court. His lawyer appeared and pleaded for his client and gave some reason as to why his client could not be in court on the day. The reason had nothing to do with what now seems to be a frenetic subterranean enterprise to have him leave the country.
Then came Monday this week. Again he was not in court. Next thing we heard, Baldeh had been expelled from the country all along – some ten days prior – at the say-so of the president of the country.
I have heard government’s argument that Baldeh could not be tried here. The reasons have ranged from the bizarre to the ridiculous. They say it is a distraction. They say it will open a can of worms. They say we should let sleeping dogs lie. Shame!
Actually, could it be that someone in government is scared that Baldeh’s trial could sniff out some unpleasant stuff? His links with Burkina Faso and the links we suspect some people in government have with that rogue state which had a colossal hand in our rebel war could have brought out some inconvenient truths. That triangle of roguery during our war days could have sputtered some puff that could have beclouded the skies even in the month of March, let alone in dark cloudy August.
My information is that Baldeh was in fact not taken to his native Senegal where he stands the risk of being arrested and tried. There are lawyers on hand in Dakar waiting to do just that. It could well have been Destination Burkina Faso. The book this story which has the potential of eroding Sierra Leone’s stature international and strengthening impunity inside the country, may just have been closed but certainly not yet set ablaze. We may read it in the future – perhaps sooner than we are now led to imagine.
(C) Politico 07/08/13
