Atrocities, Diamonds and Diplomacy

by Peter Penfold

  We settled into a routine of commuting to the office by helicopter from the ship. Every morning the team and I would assemble on deck after breakfast and wait our turn to fly across after the Royal Marines. Although the ship was stationed off Freetown, she did not remain stationary. Because of the constant need to ‘make water’ with the desalination plants on board, she routinely sailed in a square formation. One morning as we were waiting there was some excitement as we peered into the water below and saw some dead bodies floating by. It was a gruesome sight. The bodies had obviously been in the water for some time and had become bloated, and had also lost their colour, which prompted some of the younger sailors to suggest that they were the bodies of some white mercenaries.

  From the ship the helicopter flight only lasted five minutes but there was much hanging around, so that on some days it could still take nearly two hours to ‘commute to the office’.

  HMS Norfolk had to sail on to the Falklands and she was replaced by HMS Westminster. As she was the same class of frigate, the living conditions remained the same. She had sailed straight from Portsmouth, and her crew were more apprehensive about what they had come to. For some of the young sailors on board it was their first voyage. They watched in awe as the close protection team ‘tooled up’ each morning on the deck prior to flying into the war zone. An impressive collection of guns, grenades and smoke canisters were stuffed into the various pockets of their body armour. By contrast I just carried my briefcase. The young sailors waved off the team each morning and gathered in awe to see their ‘heroes’ return in the evening from the war front.

  All the close protection team played up to the innocent adulation from the ship’s young crew. One day one of them asked Craig: ‘So would you really throw yourself into the line of a bullet for your boss?’

  Craig casually answered: ‘That’s my job.’

  The crew were puzzled by the close and informal relationship between the team and myself compared to the somewhat more formal and disciplined structure they were used to in the Navy. For example, initially we had left Paul behind in Conakry to maintain the office there but when it became apparent that it was no longer needed, he joined us on board ship. His reunion with us was like welcoming a lost member of the family.

  There was not much to do of an evening, especially for the team. I would type up some reports and send them off using the ship’s communications. This was a big help as I did not want to have to spend time sending and receiving telegrams in the office. Most evenings I would eat with the captain or in the senior officers’ mess. The food was very good. The close protection team ate in the petty officers’ mess. Sometimes there would be a film and one evening there was a quiz. The close protection team volunteered to enter as a British High Commission team. I was eating with the officers but I said that I would join them as soon as I could. By the time I made it to the petty officers’ mess, the quiz was well underway and our team was not doing very well. Craig quipped: ‘It’s not surprising that the other teams are doing well. They have the same quiz with the same questions every week.’

  When the scores were reckoned up, we were joint last with the team from the Royal Marines. A deciding question had to be answered to decide who would get the wooden spoon. For the close protection team this was a matter of honour. After all the adulation they did not want to face the infamy of coming last. The question was put: ‘What is the name of the brewery that produces the beer Old Speckled Hen?’

  I have never been much of a beer drinker, preferring to stick to gin and tonic. However, by good fortune one of the last private breweries in southern England in my home town of Abingdon was Morland, and they produced Old Speckled Hen. I passed the answer to Dave, our team captain. Our honour was saved. The Royal Marines had the wooden spoon but a couple of days later they deserved medals.

  The helicopter had broken down so we decided to go in by using the rubber inflatable Zodiacs. Two of the boats were lowered into the water and we were gingerly lowered in after them. We started heading through the surprisingly choppy waters towards Freetown. We saw the outline of the Cape Sierra Hotel, which is where we had radioed ahead to Solomon in the High Commission that we would land. The other Zodiac with a team of marines on board and a couple of the close protection team was just ahead of us.

  As we turned to head for the Aberdeen Bridge there was a commotion on the boat ahead, which had pulled up suddenly. It was not immediately clear what was going on. Then someone shouted, ‘They’re shooting at us.’ At the same time I looked alongside our boat and could see spouts of water coming up in a line parallel to our boat. At first I thought it was a school of fishes swimming past, but then quickly realized that it was the path of tracer bullets skimming over the dark blue water. I dived into the bottom of the boat and felt Craig throw himself on top of me. The two boats spun around and headed at full speed back to the ship, which was some way off and oblivious to all the excitement.

  We climbed back on board ship. It took a little while to piece together what had happened. There were some Ecomog soldiers guarding the Aberdeen Bridge and, although Ecomog HQ had been warned that we would be coming in by boat that day, clearly word had not filtered down to the men on the bridge. When they saw these two rubber boats speeding towards them with guys with guns and in uniforms, they immediately suspected that we were rebels. They panicked and opened fire. We decided to abandon attempts to go in that day.

  The next day we went in, again by boat, as the helicopter was still not working. This time we were assured that everyone knew we were coming in but after the previous day’s excitement there was a heightened anxiety about the trip. However, this time the journey was uneventful and we were greeted at the slipway round the back of the Cape Sierra by Solomon and Emmanuel and some Ecomog soldiers, who apologized profusely for the previous day’s adventure.

  I went up to see President Kabbah. I apologized for failing to make our meeting the previous day and asked him if he had been briefed on what had happened. He replied, ‘Yes, I heard that there was a little difficulty. At least Ecomog were only shooting in the air.’

  I told him that the shooting was much closer than that. Here was another example of Ecomog not giving him the full story. He needed to be told the truth and not just the upbeat version of events. If one of us had been injured it would have hit the headlines and could have had a dramatic impact on the UK’s assistance.

  We continued to live on board HMS Westminster for a while but after the excitement of being shot at by Ecomog, we decided that we would actually be safer staying at the High Commission rather than attempting the hazardous commuting from ship to shore each day. So with London’s agreement the close protection team and I moved back on land. I moved into the residence and the team reoccupied their house on the compound. Some of the Royal Marines also moved onto the compound, which now more resembled army barracks than diplomatic premises.

  Living back on land meant that we had more time to deal with the enormous tasks confronting us in attempting to help get Freetown back on its feet. It also brought us more into daily contact with the victims of the atrocities. Every single Sierra Leonean with whom we came into contact had suffered a personal tragedy – a member of the family killed, a home destroyed, a hand or leg amputated, a mother or daughter raped, possessions looted, jobs lost. And all in the most deliberate, brutal and barbaric manner. Most of these people were not involved in the politics or security of the country. They were just trying to eke out a living in this the poorest country in the world. But even in their poverty they had not been able to live in peace.

  Our own local staff had been by no means immune. Those for whom we were particularly concerned, because they had been living in the east or centre of town, gradually reappeared at the High Commission. They recounted the terrible times they had gone through. Fortunately not one of them was killed. Cecilia, our receptionist, had had to flee on foot with her family, leaving all her possessions to be looted. Osman, the cook, kept his head down and su
rvived. Emmanuel went into hiding and when the rebels came to his house he did not reveal to them that he was the British High Commissioner’s driver, a fact that if discovered would have meant his instant death. Several of the staff had lost family members. One of the guards had his house burned down in front of him. It was too easy to think that such calamities do not affect Africans as much as they affect those who live in the West because the Africans are so poor to start with. But as the guard related his story I imagined what it would be like if my house in Abingdon was destroyed. That would be a major tragedy for me, the loss of all my prized possessions plus the destruction of the most expensive thing I owned, i.e. my home, but at least I had insurance and a job and friends with whom I could stay. What was it like for the thousands of Sierra Leoneans now made homeless? Maybe their homes were not much more than shacks, their possessions the sort of thing you give out to a jumble sale and the cars, for those who had them, rusting buckets on wheels, but they were all that they possessed in the world. They had no means of replacing them. The tragedy for them was infinitely worse. I raided my wardrobe and handed out clothes and belongings to those in need. I gave the guard some money to enable him to rent another house for him and his family for six months until he could get back on his feet.

  It was harrowing listening to all these stories. Solomon related the story of his boyhood friend who had emigrated to the United States to make his fortune. He was always writing to Solomon trying to persuade him to join him in the US but Solomon had stubbornly refused saying that the place for all patriotic Sierra Leoneans was at home helping to rebuild their country. The friend had come back to Sierra Leone for Christmas to see whether he should return permanently. He did! He was caught up in the fighting and was killed. His body was put into a mortuary along with several others and then the rebels came back and burnt down the mortuary. Even in death there was no peace for the poor Sierra Leoneans.

  Solomon’s friend was just one of the thousands who were killed during this orgy of death and destruction. For most their passing was noticed by only their close relations and friends. Some deaths did attract more attention. Two Western journalists, who were among the few to fly in to cover the story, were killed in an ambush when they were accompanying Julius Spencer and members of Ecomog in a so-called ‘safe’ part of the city. Two government ministers were killed. One of them was Dr Koroma, the resident minister in the north, who only months earlier had been singing God Save The Queen in Makeni. He had had to flee his home for the safety of Freetown. He and his colleague were visiting friends in the centre of the city when they came across some rebels. They were taken captive and later murdered.

  Remarkably, as far as I could ascertain not one member of the British community had lost their lives in the fighting, though many had suffered. One of these was Mr Shankerdass, the Asian businessman, who was also the Japanese Honorary Consul. He had been in his factory in the eastern part of the city when the rebels struck on 6 January and was among the group with Archbishop Ganda and the nuns who had been abducted by the rebels. For days they had been forcibly walked around the eastern end of the city as the fighting continued. They finally managed to escape from their captors with the assistance of some of the local community. Mr Shankerdass reached his home in the west and came round to the High Commission to report his safe return. This was on one of those days when we had commuted in from the ship and I met him in my office.

  On the previous occasion that I had seen Mr Shankerdass at the Christmas party at the residence, he had a full head of jet-black hair. The person who appeared at the office that morning, looking thin and tired, had white hair. I scarcely recognized him. One had heard of people going white overnight with fright. This was the first time that I had witnessed it. He recounted the awful events that he had experienced. There were over a dozen hostages in their group. They were kept on the move by the bunch of rebels who constantly threatened them. One of the nuns, who was not particularly old, had trouble keeping up with the group so one of the rebels, who could not have been more than twelve years old, swung his AK 47 round and shot her dead on the spot – merely for not walking fast enough. The young rebel gave no thought at all to the fact that she was a nun. They had no respect for anyone’s position. For example, just for fun they would stub their cigarettes out on the arms of the Archbishop.

  It was not widely known that, although he had been born in Sierra Leone of an Asian parent, Mr Shankerdass did in fact hold a British passport. I advised London to keep this information to ourselves. Although I had spoken to his wife, who was in London, to assure her that we were doing everything we could to get him released, I was worried that it would increase the danger to him if it became known to his captors that he was British. Mr Shankerdass told me he was very grateful for this. He had no doubt at all that the rebels would have killed him if they had found out that he was British. He told me that on several occasions the rebels had berated the British, and had said that one of the persons they intended to kill was me. Mr Shankerdass flew off to join his much relieved family in London. He was back a few weeks later to get his factories working again, sporting his black head of hair once more.

  Every atrocity committed was a personal tragedy, but perhaps the most harrowing were those related to the amputees. They would remain a constant legacy of these terrible times for generations to come. Children would grow up not feeling the caress of their mother’s hand. Others would grow up seeing their grandparents going around with no hands or legs.

  With the assistance of CARE and Handicap International, a camp for the amputees had been set up at Murray Town, which I had visited. Two rival organizations had been established to represent the interests of the amputees. This did not make sense so I invited a group of amputees to the office. I hoped to persuade the two groups to combine their efforts. They filed into my office, five men, two women, a teenage boy and young girl, a couple on crutches with legs missing and others who had had their hands or arms amputated. Their spokesman, Mr Sillah, made a little speech. After the meeting as they were leaving, I presented some pens that had been provided as handouts during the UK’s presidency of the European Union. I went to give one to one of the visitors who had had both his hands hacked off. I drew back and quickly put it in his jacket pocket. The scene haunted me for weeks thereafter. I kept thinking of this poor man without any hands. How would he survive in life if he could not even accept the gift of a tiny pen?

  The most disturbing were the young children. A 4-year-old girl, whose hand had been hacked off, asked her mother, ‘Mummy, will my hand grow back again?’ The youngest amputee I came across was Abu Sesay. Abu was less than two months old when the rebels struck Freetown on 6 January. As the rebels went through Wellington, one of the poorest parts of the city, Abu’s family fled. His mother, Kadi Attatouray, took his older two brothers, while his father grabbed him and ran. The rebels caught the father and killed him instantly. They picked up the two month old Abu and, without giving it a thought, hacked off his foot. They then dumped him on top of his dead father. The mother came back and found the two of them lying in the road. A couple of months later, Kadi Attatouray appeared at the gates of the residence with Abu. We brought them in. Abu was a beautiful bright-eyed baby boy with a lovely smile but he could not even crawl. Where his foot should have been was a stump looking like an elongated tent peg.

  Sad as was Abu’s case and others like him, it was perhaps worse for those who had already lived a considerable part of their lives and now had to get used to living without their limbs. The number of double amputees ran to hundreds, and for those who lived in the rural areas and subsisted by tilling their small plots, it was the end of their productive lives. Many of them pleaded with their torturers to kill them rather than leave them without any hands. One such person, a customs official, begged the person who had just hacked off both his hands to shoot him dead. Instead, the rebel came back and smashed all his teeth with the butt of a gun, so that he could not even use his mouth in place of his
hands. Such people recounted the difficulties of living, the loss of dignity, the humiliation of not even being able to go to the toilet without the assistance of another.

  I contacted the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Association in the UK. For several years I had bought their Christmas cards and marvelled at the way these artists had overcome their handicap – many of them had been thalidomide children – by producing the most amazing paintings using a paintbrush in their mouths or between their toes. To them they were artists first. Often they would display their paintings without revealing that they were handicapped. The association sent out a video and some books and cards that their members had produced and I passed these on to the amputees in Freetown.

  It was important to help them realize that their lives could still have a purpose. All the visitors to Sierra Leone used to be taken to visit the amputees. Although this always had a dramatic impact upon the visitors, I had certain reservations about this practice. For a start, it tended to be treating the amputees like exhibits in a zoo. Also, much as I sympathized with the amputees, it often meant that the thousands of other victims – the displaced and homeless, the raped and orphaned – tended to be ignored. In my view a far better way to deal with the amputees was to find jobs or other useful things for them to do, so that their dignity could be restored. I advocated that government should provide jobs for the amputees in every government ministry, and not just menial jobs. To show the way I persuaded DFID to employ an amputee in our aid section in the High Commission. We employed a bright individual whom I had got to know at my church, Desmond Bangura, as an administrative assistant.