SIERRA LEONE COUP Pledge On Early Legal Govt

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

SIERRA LEONE COUP Pledge On Early Legal Govt

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) FREETOWN (Sierra Leone), April 21. Sierra Leone’s new Army leader, Colonel John Bangura, has pledged to restore constitutional government to this country—which has had two military coups in 13 months—in the shortest possible time.

As a first concrete step in this direction, he said yesterday in his first broadcast, the former Governor-General, Sir Henry Lightfoot-Boston, had been invited back from selfimposed exile in London for consultations. Sir Henry Lightfoot-Boston, who is 69, was GovernorGeneral—the country’s first Sierra Leonean GovernorGeneral—at the time of the first coup, in March, 1967. when the Army, under Briga dier Andrew Juxon-Smith. took over. The Juxon-Smith regime de posed Sir Henry LightfootBoston and he went into exile in London. The colonel said in his broadcast that he hoped to announce within the next seven days “definite steps to be taken by the national interim council towards a speedy return to civilian rule.” He said Sierra Leone would remain a member of the Commonwealth and of the United

Nations and would endeavour to fulfil her international obligations. The new interim government announced yesterday that 85 leaders of the former administration and senior service officers had been gaoled. They include Brigadier Juxon-Smith.