Nearly three years after he was first arrested on charges tied to a failed coup attempt, the government of Sierra Leone has formally dismissed all criminal charges against Ernest Bai Koroma, the West African nation’s former head of state. The 72-year-old ex-president, who has maintained his innocence in the case, has been living in exile in Nigeria since early 2024 after a regional mediation deal allowed him to leave the country for medical care. Now, the office of Sierra Leone’s attorney general confirmed Tuesday that all legal barriers have been lifted, clearing the way for Koroma to return to his home country whenever he chooses.
The charges against Koroma, which included the grave offense of treason, stemmed from the November 2023 attempted uprising that shook the nation just months after a deeply contentious general election. On the day of the coup attempt, armed assailants stormed a military armoury and multiple correctional facilities across the country, enabling the escape of close to 2,000 incarcerated people. The violent unrest left roughly 20 people dead before government forces quelled the uprising.
The botched coup followed a tight re-election victory for current President Julius Maada Bio, who first defeated Koroma in the 2018 national vote to end the former president’s 11-year tenure in office. Bio’s narrow second-term win was immediately disputed by Koroma’s All People’s Congress, the main opposition political party. International election observers also issued public criticism of the poll, pointing to widespread gaps in transparency during the vote-counting process that fueled widespread public distrust in the results.
In an official statement responding to the dismissed charges this week, Koroma reaffirmed his long-held belief that peaceful resolution, justice and national reconciliation will always overcome political hardship and division. He also extended explicit public gratitude to three key actors for their role in facilitating the outcome: sitting Sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who hosted his exile, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional bloc that negotiated the initial agreement to allow Koroma to leave Sierra Leone for exile and medical treatment. To date, the Sierra Leonean government has not offered any public explanation for its decision to drop the full set of charges against the former president.