Civil Defence Forces

[3] In Mende culture, the identity of the kamajors is synonymous with protection, and represented a similar meaning when community defense militias mobilized in reaction to the Sierra Leonean government's failure to defeat the rebel forces of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

They soon fell under the influence and direction of academic Dr Alpha Lavalie and the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) Secretary of State East, Lieutenant Tom Nyuma.

Sam Hinga Norman, the Regent Chief of Jiama-Bongor chiefdom, became a key figure in the kamajor movement and was appointed as the SLPP's Deputy Minister of Defense.

During the war, while fighting alongside the Nigerian ECOMOG troops, the CDF was either complicit or directly responsible for many of the events brought before the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Furthermore, around the towns of Bradford and Moyamba, members of the Kamajors posed as rebels and launched multiple attacks on the civilian population that included robbery and indiscriminate murder.

[7] In 2003 the Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up in cooperation with the United Nations to bring those responsible for the greatest crimes in the country's civil war to be prosecuted.