By Kabs Kanu
Families of the late Evangelist Sampson and all those killed and maimed since President Maada Bio came to power in 2018 are being urged this morning to seek legal redress and compensation too , after a landmark judgment by the ECOWAS Court on public accountability in Sierra Leone.
According to a joint statement released today by AdvocAID and the Institute For Human Rights Development in Africa ( IHRDA ), the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS ) Community Court of Justice has delivered what the two organizations described in their statement as an important judgement in a matter brought before it involving a Sierra Leonean, Mohamed Morlu against the Republic of Sierra Leone in what is about to become the landmark Mohamed Morlu v. Republic of Sierra Leone case.
The ECOWAS Court has ordered the Government of Sierra Leone to pay Mr. Morlu monetary compensation after being found culpable in violating several of Mr. Morlu’s rights under the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights , the international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture ( CAT ) .
Mr. Morlu was shot in the abdomen by the Sierra Leone Police during a student demonstration in the Southern city of Bo in March 2017. Morlu complained that the government never effectively investigated the matter, nor brought those who inflicted the injury on him to justice. The incident took place during the tenure of former President Ernest Bai Koroma .
This decision by the ECOWAS Court will open a huge and smelly can of worms in Sierra Leone, where the last 5 years have been marked by worst human rights abuses which include killings, maiming, torture , rapes and unlawful imprisonment of people exercising their rights to demonstrate against the dictatorial government of President Maada Bio. It is even possible that some families will be advised to seek even more drastic action against Maada Bio in the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) .
With President Bio’s files already on the table at the ICC, the United Nations , the U.S State Department and the U.S Congress, Bio should worry about today’s judgement by the ECOWAS Court. Any SLPP Supporter who rejoices because the Morlu case happened during the APC rule must be really retarded because he must know that what has happened is a landmark legal precedent that will come back to bite the very SLPP, considered to have committed the worst human rights abuses ever in the country by a sitting head of state since Independence.
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