Sierra Leone drops treason case against former president Ernest Bai Koroma

Sierra Leone’s attorney-general discontinued the treason case against former president Ernest Bai Koroma on July 14, 2026, ending criminal proceedings, lifting his bail conditions and clearing him to return home after medical treatment. The move removes a legal fault line in a case that sat at the intersection of coup fears, elite politics and post-crisis accountability.

Koroma, who led Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2018, had been charged in January 2024 with treason and misprision of treason over the failed attack that shook Freetown on November 26, 2023. Armed men hit the Wilberforce barracks armoury and later broke into Central Pademba Road Prison, releasing nearly the prison’s entire population of 1,890 inmates. At least 18 security personnel were killed in the clashes, and authorities said dozens of suspects were arrested after the unrest.

The Office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice said it acted under Section 45 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 2024. That formal discontinuance ends the case entirely, not just the current phase of it, and leaves Koroma free to return to Sierra Leone after treatment or whenever he chooses.

Koroma denied involvement when the charges were brought, and he later received bail on medical grounds before traveling abroad for treatment. Reporting at the time said he went to Nigeria. The decision to drop the case comes after a prosecution that had become one of the most closely watched tests of how President Julius Maada Bio’s government would handle a former head of state accused in a destabilizing security crisis.

The case was never limited to Koroma. The broader crackdown after the November 2023 violence also swept up other suspects, including former military personnel, as the government tried to reassert control after one of the country’s most serious security shocks in years. For Koroma, a major opposition figure, the end of the prosecution reduces one source of confrontation, but it also shows how closely Sierra Leone’s institutions continue to manage the politics of the attack rather than resolve them through a full public reckoning.