Foday Sankoh Foday Saybana Sankoh ( 17 October 1937 – 29 July 2003 ) was the leader and founder of the Sierra Leone rebel group Revolutionary United Front ( RUF ) in the 11 - year - long Sierra Leone Civil War , starting in 1991 and ending in 2002 . An estimated 50 , 000 people were killed during the war , and over 500 , 000 people were displaced in neighbouring countries . Early life and career . Foday Sankoh was born on 17 October 1937 , in the remote village of Masang Mayoso , Tonkolili District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone to an ethnic Temne father and a Loko mother . Sankoh was the son of a farmer . Sankoh attended primary and secondary school in Magburaka , Tonkolili District and took on a number of jobs in Magburaka before he joined the Sierra Leone army in 1956 . He undertook training in Nigeria and the United Kingdom . In 1971 , then a corporal in the Sierra Leone army , he was cashiered from the army ' s signal corps and imprisoned for seven years at the Pademba Road Prison in Freetown for taking part in a mutiny . On his release he worked as an itinerant photographer in the south and east of Sierra Leone , eventually coming in contact with young radicals . Sankoh and confederates Rashid Mansaray and Abu Kanu solicited support for an armed uprising to oust the APC government . They then traveled to Liberia , where they reportedly continued recruiting and served with Charles G . Taylor ' s National Patriotic Front of Liberia ( NPFL ) . Civil war . On 23 March 1991 , the RUF , led by Foday Sankoh and backed by Charles Taylor , launched its first attack in villages in Kailahun District in the diamond - rich Eastern Province of Sierra Leone . The RUF became notorious for brutal practices such as mass rapes and amputations during the civil war . Sankoh personally ordered many operations , including one called " Operation Pay Yourself " that encouraged troops to loot anything they could find . After complaining about such tactics , Kanu and Mansaray were summarily executed . In March 1997 , Sankoh fled to Nigeria , where he was put under house arrest , and then imprisoned . From this time until Sankoh ' s release in 1999 , Sam Bockarie performed the task of director of military operations of the RUF . During the ten - year war , Sankoh broke several promises to stop fighting , including the Abidjan Peace Accord and the Lomé Peace Accord signed in 1999 . Eventually the United Kingdom and ECOMOG intervened with their own small , but professional , military forces , and the RUF was eventually crushed . Sankoh was later arrested after his soldiers gunned down a number of protesters outside his Freetown home in 2000 . His arrest led to massive celebrations throughout Sierra Leone . Sankoh was handed to the British and , under jurisdiction of a UN - backed court , he was indicted on 17 counts for various war crimes , including use of child soldiers and crimes against humanity , including extermination , enslavement , rape and sexual slavery . Death . Sankoh died of complications arising from a stroke whilst awaiting trial . In a statement by the UN - backed war crimes court , chief prosecutor David Crane said that Sankoh ' s death granted him " a peaceful end that he denied to so many others " .