Murder, aggravated robbery and treason are capital crimes

Murder, aggravated robbery and treason are capital crimes.
Sierra Leone, a former British colony, has been dogged by instability for decades. After four years of military rule, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah came to power in February 1996, but was ousted by junior military officers led by Major Johnny Paul Koroma on May 25, 1997. President Kabbah fled to Conakry, Guinea with a large majority of his Government, and the Koroma regime itself was ousted by the Nigerian-led West African Peacekeeping Force (ECOMOG) in February 1998. On October 12, 1998, in Freetown, a court martial sentenced 34 soldiers to death on treason charges for their role in the May 1997 coup and the military junta that supplanted President Kabbah. On October 19, 1998, a firing squad publicly carried out the death sentence on 24 soldiers of the 34 convicted of treason. Trials before courts martial in Sierra Leone allow no right of appeal against conviction and sentence to a higher jurisdiction, in violation of international fair trial standards. The country's civil war broke out again early in May 2000 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) refused to disarm to UN peacekeepers, taking hundreds of them hostage.