The News Review:

- Sierra Leone is on the right path – Annan
- Off the Page: Russell Banks
- No case to answer, Halloran’s defence says

Sierra Leone is on the right path – Annan
Independent Online – Dec 16, 2004
Sierra Leone comes in 177th on a UN Development Programme list of countries ranked by standard of living. Government revenues have risen as it struggles against trafficking, Annan said in a report to the UN Security Council released on Wednesday. From January until October, diamond export receipts reached $120-million (about R700-million), up from $71-million for the same period in 2003, reflecting the control Freetown has imposed on the trade, the report said.

Off the Page: Russell Banks
Washington Post – Dec 16, 2004
In terms of research, I naturally read everything that has been written about Liberia, and there is a great deal that has been written about from the beginning, because the African Americans that settled there early on were mostly literate, and kept good diaries and letters and journals, which have been preserved. But I also interviewed Liberians living in the United States and Americans who had served there in the Peace Corps, and even a CIA operative stationed in Monravio during the Tolbert years. And I traveled to West Africa several times–Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal, and got the know the region physically. A year ago July, I tried to get into Liberia, just as it erupted into violence again. The roads were closed by the warlords and people were being kidnapped and killed, and as the father of four daughters, a husband and son, I decided the better part of valor was to stay in Sierra Leone, where it was only marginally calmer? Carole Burns: Was it disappointing not to be able to go? Russell Banks: Yes and no. I was there as a novelist, not as a journalist or historian, so what I was interested in was the sound, smell and look of the place, its physical presence. And Sierra Leone, which is adjacent to Liberia and has similar history, gave me enough information that I felt confident in writing about Liberia…
The roads were closed by the warlords and people were being kidnapped and killed, and as the father of four daughters, a husband and son, I decided the better part of valor was to stay in Sierra Leone, where it was only marginally calmer? Carole Burns: Was it disappointing not to be able to go? Russell Banks: Yes and no. I was there as a novelist, not as a journalist or historian, so what I was interested in was the sound, smell and look of the place, its physical presence. And Sierra Leone, which is adjacent to Liberia and has similar history, gave me enough information that I felt confident in writing about Liberia. Carole Burns: The Post reviewer who was there during the civil war, and said you captured it successfully, is going to be very impressed! Russell Banks: I’ve heard about that review! I’ve spoken since to a number of Liberians, while doing publicity for the book, and they all said that they thought I got it right. So that pleased me. _______________________Houston, TX: Is she a darling, and an American darling, because she is privileged, oblivious, and stonehearted?Cloudsplitter is one of the best American books I have read, in 70 years of reading. I do like John Brown better than Hannah.

No case to answer, Halloran’s defence says
The Age – Dec 16, 2004
Gavin Simpson in Sierra Leone and MartinDaly report. Three months into a controversial trial that was to last a fewweeks, the damage to Victoria Police Superintendent Peter Halloranis obvious, say friends. He is on bail, but at times he doesn’t look well as he is forcedrepeatedly to turn up for court hearings that do not take place butthat could send him to a West African jail for two years. The fallout locally and internationally has been extensive andthe mood within the United Nations Special Court in Freetown,Sierra Leone, where Halloran worked, has turned “poisonous”. Staff members now take sides in the saga with its allegations ofchild sex abuse, lies and police intimidation to convict Halloranof a crime he says he did not commit.