How Bambay Kamara Was Murdered – AKK Opens Up, Names Killers

Dr. Abdul Karim Koroma, the former APC Foreign Minister before the overthrow of that government by the junta regime in 1992 has given a true account of how former Inspector General of Police, James Bambay Kamara and others were dragged out of detention and murdered.

Writing in his latest book “In Detention- The Story of a Political Prisoner in Sierra Leone”, Dr Koroma fondly called AKK writes;

“The next day at 8:am SAJ Musa was again in Pademba Prison to arrest the rest of the alleged plotters including Yaya and Bambay. By 3:00pm that day, it was all over. By 8:00pm that night, Junta Chairman Strasser went on national radio to announce the coup and justification of the action taken by the regime. Earlier in the day, Strasser had signed the execution order. Who bears the greatest responsibility in the circumstance?”

According to Global Times, the 107 page book tells a story of the fall of the 24 year-old APC regime which was overthrown by young Military officers in their twenties. The National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) as the junta regime came to be known later detained twenty nine senior politicians of the old regime at the infamous Pademba Road Prisons for most part of the four years the NPRC took in power.

The ordeal which those political prisoners went through during their incarceration and the extra-judicial killing perpetrated against some others like the Inspector General of Police, James Bambay Kamara was well captured by the author.

The former Sierra Leone Ambassador to China who unveiled his book last Friday at the Sierra Leone China Friendship House in Freetown said; “This book is not a vendetta against anybody and I hold myself strictly reliable for the veracity or otherwise of the information contain therein”.

Speaking at the brief ceremony, Dr. Koroma, who was himself detained by the military regime in 1992 after the fall of their government, expressed the hope that the young generation will learn from his historical account.

He said it took him so long to write the book because of some many factors including political threats and his desire to present the facts as they were without being emotional.