Oumar Farouk Sesay: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 26 July 2027:
Sierra Leone investigates stolen money through commissions, hearings and sanctions. But when citizens are killed, the nation is too often met with silence, delay and unanswered questions. Now, reports that former presidents may be granted immunity threaten to turn that silence into law.
This should outrage every citizen. Immunity may sound like protection for the presidency. In practice, it can become protection from justice.
A president may need limited safeguards against frivolous lawsuits while in office, but permanent immunity after leaving office is something else entirely: a license for power to escape consequences.
Africa has paid the price for such impunity. In Sudan, Omar al-Bashir remained beyond the reach of international arrest for years while Darfur’s victims waited. In Kenya, cases stemming from post-election violence collapsed amid missing evidence, weak cooperation, and witness interference. In The Gambia, victims of killings, torture, and disappearances have waited years for senior perpetrators to face trial.
The details differ. The warning does not. When justice bends around powerful men, victims grow old waiting for truth. Witnesses die. Evidence disappears. Grief becomes inheritance.
Sierra Leone must not choose that path. The country still carries unanswered questions from Pademba Road, where inmates and a correctional officer were reported killed in April 2020. It still carries the blood of 10 August 2022, when police officers and civilians lost their lives.
The killing of police officers was criminal and indefensible. So too would be the unlawful killing of civilians. Human rights do not wear party colours. Blood does not become less sacred because of the uniform, region, or political allegiance of the person who shed it.
Who gave the orders? Who authorised live ammunition? Who fired? Who knew? Who failed to intervene? Who investigated? Who answered to the families?
These are not partisan questions. They are the questions that separate constitutional government from organised impunity.
A president may not pull the trigger. But presidents appoint commanders, influence security policy, receive reports and preside over the machinery of the state. Accountability must therefore climb the chain of command. It must examine not only who fired, but who ordered, who approved, who concealed and who remained silent.
Any law that blocks those questions would be a betrayal. It would tell Sierra Leoneans that the state can recover stolen property but not account for stolen lives. It would summon officials before commissions over houses, vehicles and bank accounts, yet draw a curtain over death.
That is not justice. It is moral bankruptcy.
Parliament must publish the proposed law that grants presidential immunity and subject it to public scrutiny. Any immunity must be narrow, temporary and restricted to lawful official conduct. It must never shield unlawful killing, torture, enforced disappearance, corruption, obstruction of justice or the concealment of abuse.
The presidency is not a sanctuary from the law. It is a temporary trust.
A former president may leave office with honours, guards and a pension. He must not leave with the law folded into his pocket.
Money can be recovered. Property can be returned. The dead do not come home.
Do not turn immunity into impunity. Do not place power above the law. Do not bury justice with the victims.
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