Dear Rev. SamForay, Karmoh AKB and Demia Toegondoe.:

I thank you all for the sentiments you have expressed about the tragedy involving Kula. It is almost nine years since it occurred. For your information, our extended family has been coping and finding ways to outgrow the grief.

One way we did not want to do that was to allow anyone to harvest political hay from the situation. In a civilian administration, even during the whirlwind Stevo-Momoh period, the signing of death warrants is a collective cabinet-level decision. In 1998, Attorney-General Solomon Berewa, Internal Affairs Minister Charles Margai and Deputy Defense Minister Hinga Norman were all senior members of the Kabba administration. The opposition APC did not register any protest either. That is all I am going to say about that.

Kula somehow found herself serving, for many months, in a military junta that had overthrown a legitimately elected civilian government. The junta's members were all military officers and their civilian commander-in-chief ordered them to give it up. Those who obeyed were later pardoned and returned to their posts. Those who didn't were punished according to the provisions of the constitution.

Like many of her co-defendants, Kula agreed at the court-martial that she really shouldn’t have been a member of the AFRC. It was a very bad judgment, one that we who are her family have never tried to soften. We know that many Sierra Leoneans have been executed before that time for merely happening to know about a plot to overthrow the government. It is known in our law books as Misprision of Treason, and it needn't require the actual overthrow of the government, as was the case when Johnny-Paul Koroma formed his AFRC junta to replace President Kabba's government.

Rev. SamForay states that Kula "attended Bumpe High Scool and AKB seems to imply rightly or wrongly that her Bumpe roots which she shares with Berewa should have endeared her to the other Bumpe native, Solo B." My response is that had this been done, Karmoh AKB and others would be crowing about it to this day. Besides when Brigadier John Bangura, Dr. MS Fornah, Ibrahim Taqi, Francis Minah and Gabriel KaiKai were condemned to death for treason, Presidents Stevens and Momoh had no consideration for the fact that the men had all been very close political allies, some of whom had played pivotal roles in bringing these presidents to power.

Toegondoe seems to suggest that I should have severed relationship with the SLPP because of thia matter. My response is that jumping parties every time you disagree with the deision of its leaders is something the Karefa-Smarts and Charles Margais of Sierra Leone are more adept at. Frankly, I am not. I have got my own ways of dealing with disagreements in organizations.

Those who sympathize with the fate of Kula and the other exeuted individuals should focus on campaigning to change the laws that they don't agree with. I happen to believe that our court system works for much of the time. What doesn’t work is the tendency by our governments to criminalize political differences as has occasionally happened over the past three decades; or citizens being detained/jailed for long periods of time without being given access to lawyers; or accused persons tried without the chance of an appeal. 

These and other facts prove that we are not as free today as we were during the colonial period or during the early years of our independence.  If we are going to have a free country again, our constitution would need to be reformed. At the same time, our judges are going to have to step out and be strong. They must remember where we came from and where we want to go.