Liberian government: Rebels release 180 more hostages

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Sierra Leone guerrillas released 180 more U.N. hostages Friday even as the country's president announced plans to prosecute Foday Sankoh, leader of a rebel group skirmishing with government forces.

The U.N. peacekeeper captives were handed over to authorities in Foya, a border town in neighboring Liberia, a statement released in Monrovia said. Liberia said the latest release left fewer than 100 of the original 500 hostages still in rebel hands.

In the government's first announcement on Sankoh's fate since his capture earlier this month, President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah accused the rebel chief of committing serious crimes.

''This time around Sankoh will be prosecuted,'' Kabbah said in comments carried on state radio and television.

Sankoh was convicted of treason in 1998 and sentenced to death. However, he was later released from jail under provisions of a peace accord signed last July.

Kabbah didn't say what charges the rebel chief would face or when a trial would be held. The government has said that any prosecution would be for crimes that were committed after last year's signing of the peace deal meant to end the civil war.

Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front rebels have reportedly demanded his freedom and his prosecution threatens to ignite further conflict.

The government has been investigating Sankoh's role in the deaths of 21 people at the hands of rebel gunmen during a protest in front of Sankoh's Freetown residence earlier this month and well as allegations that rebels have been involved in diamond smuggling.

U.N. and human rights officials also charge that rebels have continued to carry out killings and rapes in parts of Sierra Leone that remain under their control.

The developments came as the United Nations revealed that it believes several mutilated corpses found this week in war-ravaged west African nation were the bodies of U.N. peacekeepers.

The bodies are believed to be four Zambians and one or two Nigerians, U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst said. They were badly decomposed when found Monday, and in some cases only whitened bones remained.

The United Nations has been collecting information from the various forces who had fighters in the area near Rogberi Junction, about 50 miles east of the capital, Freetown, where there was a May 6 battle between U.N. peacekeepers and rebels from the RUF.

Four Zambian and two Nigerian soldiers were reported missing after the battle, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

The bodies were discovered not far from where Associated Press Television News cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora and Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork were later killed.

In his broadcast comment, Kabbah expressed his sorrow to the families of the two slain journalists and to those of the two wounded.

''These men were not involved in any fighting but were trying to bring out the facts for the whole world to know,'' the president said.

Gil Moreno de Mora and Schork died Wednesday in a rebel ambush along the road east from Rogberi Junction to Lunsar. South African cameraman Mark Chisholm and Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis suffered light injuries in the same attack.

The rebels killed tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneons and intentionally mutilated many more during the country's civil war, which ended in July with a shaky peace accord. The conflict reignited earlier this month when the RUF took the U.N. peacekeepers hostage and began advancing toward Freetown.

Since then, an alliance of pro-government forces has been pushing the rebels away from the capital.

Human Rights Watch accused the RUF of imposing a ''reign of terror'' during its weeklong occupation of the area around Masiaka, a town 45 miles east of Freetown.

Rebel fighters abducted, raped, killed and mutilated civilians in the area before they were repelled more than a week ago by pro-government forces, the international group said Friday.

The rebels have also been looting and destroying homes, and forcibly recruiting civilians, U.N. human rights official Richard Bennett said.

There were also reports of beatings and slayings by pro-government forces. Both sides have been re-enlisting child fighters, some as young as 10, Bennett said.

Thousands of civilians have fled their homes. More than 35,000 people have poured into Freetown alone since the beginning of May. Up to 10,000 other people have gathered on an island just north Freetown after fleeing violence, Eckhard said.