FREETOWN, Aug 30 (AFP) - A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up
to investigate Sierra Leone's brutal 10-year civil war said on Friday it
will start formal deliberations next month.
   TRC Deputy Commissioner Judge Laura Marcus-Jones told a news conference
that it would start dispatching investigators throughout the west African
nation to hear people's tales of horror from a civil war known the world
over for the way rebels specialised in amputating the hands and feet of
their victims.
   Once they have collated all the information, a formal report writing
process will being in August 2003.
   The TRC was appointed in May this year by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
   It is made up of four Sierra Leoneans and three foreigners including
South Africa's Yasmin Sooka, a former member of the TRC in her country,
Irish law professor William Schabas, and former Gambian education minister
Satang Jow.
   Unlike its South African counterpart, the Sierra Leonean body will not
have the power to grant amnestyies or collaborate with a special tribunal
created jointly by the United Nations and the Sierra Leonean government to
judge war crimes suspects.
   Meanwhile, the United nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on
Friday  that about 270 Sierra Leoneans who fled to Nigeria during the rebel
war in their country had agreed to return home.
   A group of 64 were flown home earlier this week as part of a one-month
operation to repatriate all of them in five weekly flights from Lagos,
officials say.
   UNHCR officer Abubakarr Jalloh said the returnees would be provided with
food and non food items to help them "settle down".
   Since September 2000, the UNHCR has assisted over 100,000 Sierra
Leoneans mainly from Liberia and Guinea to return home.

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