Sierra Leone Pronounces Arrest of 14 in ‘Tried Coup’

The small West African nation of Sierra Leone introduced on Tuesday that it had arrested 13 navy officers and one civilian in reference to a thwarted coup try on Sunday, when 20 individuals had been killed and greater than 2,000 prisoners had been let unfastened.

“What occurred on Sunday, twenty sixth November 2023, was a failed tried coup,” Chernor Bah, the nation’s data minister, advised reporters on Tuesday. However he didn’t establish any of the 14 individuals arrested.

Residents remained on edge within the capital, Freetown, the place there was a heavy navy presence on the streets and an elevated variety of safety checkpoints. Most colleges had been shut down.

The nation’s president, Julius Maada Bio, 59, a former navy officer who took half in two coups throughout Sierra Leone’s civil warfare within the Nineties, was re-elected in a good vote in June. However the outcomes of the vote have been rejected by his important opponent, contributing to a tense political environment, and the election was deemed to be not clear by many worldwide observers.

The violence in Sierra Leone has exacerbated jitters throughout the area, which lately has endured a collection of navy coups, most of them profitable. In Guinea, a neighbor of Sierra Leone, in addition to in Niger, juntas rule regardless of vocal protests from the Financial Group of West African States, the regional bloc generally known as ECOWAS, of which all three nations are members, and worldwide efforts to revive civilian governments.

“ECOWAS mentioned they’d a non-coup coverage,” mentioned Adedayo Ademuwagun, a Lagos-based analyst with Songhai Advisory, a danger evaluation agency. However in the long run, the coups in Niger and Guinea weren’t reversed, he added, “so the armies in neighboring nations ask themselves: Why not us?”

Of Sierra Leone, he mentioned, “With a fractured military, an unpopular authorities and a weak administration, the political danger stays elevated.”

Mr. Bio has been praised for a coverage that has drastically expanded entry to training. However he has been criticized in Freetown, an opposition stronghold, and within the northern a part of the nation for his lavish life-style and for failing to ship on guarantees to enhance livelihoods.

He was re-elected regardless of having overseen violent repression of protests, together with in the summertime of 2022, when greater than two dozen individuals died in clashes amid demonstrations over rising costs.

Sierra Leone is among the many poorest nations on the planet, rating 182 out of 189, in line with the U.N. human growth index. Practically 60 p.c of individuals in Sierra Leone are meals insecure, in line with the World Meals Programme.

Mr. Bio tried to reassure the nation on Sunday night, saying that “calm has been restored” following “a breach of safety” at totally different websites, together with the principle navy barracks, the armory and the Pademba Street Jail in Freetown.

The 20 individuals killed in clashes between the assailants and the safety forces included 13 troopers, three assailants, cops, a civilian and a non-public safety officer, Mr. Bah, the data minister, mentioned. A complete of two,133 prisoners fled three totally different prisons because of Sunday’s break-ins, he mentioned, and solely 178 have returned.

Earlier on Tuesday, the police mentioned that they arrested an extra individual close to the navy barracks, and that “a couple of photographs had been fired within the course of.” Though there have been no casualties, the information swiftly unfold on social media, inflicting panic amongst residents. These dwelling close to the navy barracks, the place the arrest occurred, had been seen leaving their houses in haste to hunt shelter elsewhere.

The All Individuals’s Congress, the principle opposition occasion, issued a press release on Tuesday condemning “the dastardly acts of violence,” including that it “categorically” condemned “any try and affiliate our occasion to any type of violence.”

“As a accountable political occasion,” the assertion added, “we strongly imagine within the assumption of energy by means of the poll field and never by means of the barrel of a gun.”