Sierra Leone drops treason charge against ex-president Koroma

Sierra Leone's government has dropped treason and related charges against former President Ernest Bai Koroma over the 2023 attempted coup. The attorney general's office said Koroma is now free to return to Sierra Leone from exile in Nigeria. The decision marks a significant legal and political development in a case that has shadowed the country since the unrest.

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Koroma, 72, had been arrested after the attempted coup and later placed under house arrest. The government did not say why it had dismissed the charges. Koroma has always denied involvement in the November 2023 events, when gunmen broke into a military armoury and several prisons, freeing almost 2,000 inmates.

Around 20 people were killed in the violence, according to the supplied report. After the charges were brought, the West African regional bloc brokered an arrangement that allowed Koroma to travel to Nigeria for exile and medical treatment. In a statement responding to the case being dropped, Koroma said he believed that peace, justice and reconciliation must always triumph over adversity.

He also thanked Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and the regional bloc for their support. The case is politically sensitive because Koroma led Sierra Leone for 11 years until 2018, when Bio was elected president. The attempted coup came five months after a disputed election in which Bio narrowly won a second term.

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Koroma's All People's Congress rejected the result, and international observers criticised the vote, citing a lack of transparency in the count. The latest move may ease one source of tension between the government and the former president's camp. The attempted coup itself remains one of the most serious security incidents in Sierra Leone in recent years.

It involved attacks on a military armoury and prisons, and the release of a large number of inmates raised immediate concerns about public order and state control. The government has not explained whether any other related cases will be affected by the decision to drop the charges against Koroma. What remains unclear is whether Koroma will return immediately, and whether the authorities will take any further steps in the wider investigation into the attempted coup.

It is also not known whether the decision signals a broader political settlement or only a narrow legal move. For now, the attorney general's office says Koroma is free to come back to the country, while the reasons for the charge being dropped have not been made public.

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