News

By Kemo Cham

The health sector in the Sierra Leone capital, Freetown, suffers gross neglect and abuse of patients seeking healthcare with even the dead not spared, says a new report by a local organisation Campaign for Human Rights and Development International (CHRDI).

The damning report released over the weekend says health centres and hospitals, especially in government-run facilities, habitually demand bribes before attending to patients. 

Patients who resist such demands are sent back home without treatment.

By Umaru Fofana 

Police in Sierra Leone on Friday released on bail three senior officials of the country’s football association after they had spent a night in custody. 

On Thursday the President of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) Isha Johansen, her Vice President Brima “Mazola” Kamara and Secretary General Chris Kamara were detained on the orders of the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission.

They have not been charged. 

Mrs Johansen says her arrest and subsequent detention left her “shocked and mortified”.

By Mabinti Kamara

The Sierra Leone Brewery Limited (SLBL), the leading liquor producer in the country, has defended the government’s recent move to increase tax on imported alcoholic beverages., syaing the new tax regime is sure to help boost local manufacturers.

By Umaru Fofana

Police in Sierra Leone on Wednesday night detained the President of the Sierra Leone Football Association, Isha Johansen, her Vice President and the Secretary General.

The three had earlier been picked up and taken to the headquarters of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in Freetown before they were handed over to the police Criminal Investigations Department (CID).

By Umaru Fofana

Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) says it has launched an operation codenamed “Operation Thunderbolt” aimed at “routing and bringing to justice fugitive persons alleged to have been involved in corrupt acts and who are of interest” to the agency.

In a press release issued today, the anti-graft agency says a fugitive who fled to neighbouring Guinea in 2013 as he was being sought for an alleged corruption case, is now in detention.

By Kemo Cham

A newspaper editor under investigation for "contempt of parliament" has accused the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) of betrayal.

Moisa Sallu Keikura, editor of the triweekly Future newspaper, was briefly detained by the police Criminal Investigations Department two weeks ago on the orders, he said, of the country’s parliament which accused him of contempt.

He’d angered the House for a letter he wrote to them which they deemed "disrespectful".

By Umaru Fofana 

Twenty Sierra Leoneans have been seized in Sabha, south-western Libya and are being tortured, according to a distress-sounding man who called Politico an hour ago [Wednesday morning] claiming to be one of them.

The caller, Christian Koroma said "we the 14 men are being locked inside a house and our captors are regularly beating us". 

He said the six women were being held elsewhere and implied they could be being raped.