Sierra Leone ex-president returns after treason case dropped

Former Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma returned to his home country Sunday, where authorities welcomed him after treason charges against him over an alleged coup attempt were dropped.

Koroma had left for Nigeria in 2024, days after being charged with treason and other offences over a deadly 2023 army uprising.

The ex-president, who led Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2018, arrived at the international airport in the capital, Freetown, accompanied by Nigerian ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigerian Foreign Minister Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, an AFP journalist said.

He was welcomed by Sierra Leone's Foreign Minister Mohamed Rahman Swarray and officials from Koroma's party, the opposition All People's Congress (APC).

"Today I have come back home and I'm happy," Koroma told journalists, smiling.

Koroma had been cleared by Sierra Leonean authorities to travel to Nigeria for three months for medical treatment, but ended up staying more than two years.

In July, Sierra Leone's justice ministry said it had dropped the charges against him, without giving a reason.

On Friday, Vice President Mohamed Jukdeh Jalloh told a gathering of local leaders and residents in Koroma's stronghold, the central city of Makeni, that the ex-leader was returning home.

His homecoming comes ahead of presidential elections set for 2028.

The case against Koroma dated to November 2023, when armed attackers stormed a military armoury, two barracks, two prisons and two police stations, clashing with security forces.

Twenty-one people were killed in what authorities deemed a coup attempt.

Two dozen soldiers and Koroma's former bodyguard were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 50 to 100 years by a military court for their alleged roles in the mutiny.

Koroma had briefly visited Sierra Leone in July, after the charges were dropped, during a summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the invitation of current President Julius Maada Bio.