Journalist Stephen Douglas’ death in Freetown is an unfortunate incident which derived from the stage-managed coup d’état that was hatched primarily to divert the attention of the international community from concentrating on the Tripartite Investigations Committee set up to probe the fraudulent June 24, 2023, general and presidential elections that the illegal Sierra Leone President stole publicly. It is time for the inept SLPP regime of the illegitimate Sierra Leone President Maada Bio to take up the responsibility for the death of all the innocent people killed during the fake coup. The Canadian government should hold Maada Bio responsible for Mr Stephen Douglas’ untimely death. (Photo: Mr Stephen Douglas, RIP).

It was no coincidence that Monday, November 27 was the date slated for the implementation of Resolution 4 of the Communique which demanded the release of all prisoners arrested by Maada Bio’s regime for political, electoral and protesting reasons. As Maada Bio was aware that his barbaric SLPP regime could not account for all the prisoners, (because most of them had been summarily killed in secret) they decided to launch the fake coup a day before i.e. on Sunday, November 26 which saw the concocted prison break that let out hundreds of prisoners into freedom. What a blunder Maada Bio’s fake coup turned out to be. (Photo: Leather Boot, RIP).

The fake prison break was done to justify the missing prisoners who had been killed a long time ago. Bio’s fake coup left a trail of destruction and unnecessary deaths of innocent Sierra Leoneans and the demise of the veteran Canadian journalist Mr Stephen Douglas who was reportedly shot by Bio’s soldiers. The other prominent citizens murdered on that fateful day include a popular former soldier called Leather Boot, real name Mr Idrissa Kamara. He was the former bodyguard to the former Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma. The other well-known citizen killed by Bio’s soldiers was Mr Sorieba, a former policeman. Both men were arrested in their homes and killed in cold blood.

Maada Bio’s fake coup on Sunday, November 26, 2023, backfired because it was poorly planned and executed. Military experts say the attack on the armoury at Wilberforce Barracks on November 26 in Freetown where the so-called assailants broke open the vault to remove high-calibre guns and ammunition could not have been done by outsiders. The armoury store is coded and only military insiders who knew the combinations could have opened that arms vault. Also, the so-called coup makers after having got those weapons never raided the Presidential Lodge or any radio station as all true coupists do. (Photo: Ernest Koroma’s security shot dead in his residence).

How on earth would coup leaders fail to attack the presidency and government officials but instead raid the premises of opposition politicians like the APC leader Dr Samura Kamara whose residence in Freetown was attacked that same day? The so-called coup leaders also attacked the premises of former President Ernest Koroma where his security, a soldier was shot to death. All these attacks point fingers directly to the Bio soldiers who were ordered to pretend to be coupists to divert attention from the ongoing electoral investigations which Maada Bio knew would not favour his stay in power. More details below on the murder of journalist Douglas from Canada –

The Death of Canadian journalist Stephen Douglas in Sierra Leone Shrouded in Mystery

By Cooper Inveen in Dakar Senegal

As the first hues of dawn painted the skies of Sierra Leone’s coastal capital last Sunday, the city awoke to the staccato rhythm of gunfire. Renegade soldiers had breached Freetown’s largest barracks, pilfering ammunition in what authorities would later call an attempted coup d’état. Stephen Douglas Lett, a 60-year-old Canadian journalist and media trainer who wrote under the byline Stephen Douglas, stood on his apartment balcony near the city’s downtown and sent phone messages to friends and colleagues. “Fighting continues across Freetown … and I can hear the gunshots and explosions in my neighbourhood,” he told a Globe and Mail journalist.

The day was madness. As rogue soldiers fled through the city, they unlocked the gates of the country’s largest jail, releasing more than 2,000 prisoners onto the streets. Around 10 am, Mr. Douglas decided to venture out. “I haven’t heard gunshots or explosions in about 20 minutes,” he told the Globe journalist. “I’m going to take a short tour on my motorbike.” A few minutes later, a police officer found his slumped body at a roundabout near a police station, where he had been interviewing witnesses to the day’s chaos, just a stone’s throw from his home. The policeman said he had suffered a heart attack. He was taken to a nearby military hospital, where he was pronounced dead. (Photo; Maada Bio’s unruly soldiers killed so many innocent people on November 26).

The police officer’s account has been met with scepticism among Sierra Leone’s journalists, many of whom had been mentored by Mr. Douglas as students. The conflicting narratives surrounding his final moments – complicated by reports of a gunfight at the spot where authorities say he died – mirrored the political and social complexities he had dedicated his life to deciphering. Two days after his death, at a crowded press conference, Sierra Leone’s information minister Chernor Bah gave a eulogy for Mr. Douglas, portraying his death as the result of a heart attack on a tumultuous day. But as the session progressed, the questions from local journalists brought to light the rumours that had been swirling through the city: whispered suggestions that he had been hit by a bullet.

In a revelation that chipped a crack in the dam of the official statements, Mr. Bah and a senior police commander acknowledged that the cause of the Canadian journalist’s death was still unknown. His body has been held at the military hospital, awaiting an autopsy that has no scheduled date yet. Questions have persisted. The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists has lodged an official request for information, seeking answers from the government about his death. Mr. Douglas, born in the Toronto area on May 29, 1963, and educated at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, began his career as a photographer in some of history’s harshest moments. His photos showed the waning days of South African apartheid in the early 1990s and the harrowing depths of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

But the fervor of capturing the moment, he felt, often eclipsed empathy and understanding. This reshaped his life, steering him towards a path where his role was not to tell the story, but to empower others to narrate their own. After returning to Canada, he immersed himself in health reporting, taking up editing jobs at a variety of medical publications, before shifting into educational roles. Teaching stints at Sheridan College and St. Lawrence College saw him guide prospective journalists through photojournalism and creative writing, foreshadowing a role that would come to define the rest of his life.Mr. Douglas returned to Africa in 2009, this time to Sierra Leone, where his dual expertise in media and education would converge. He became a mentor and trainer to young local journalists, always seeing their potential. (Photo: Rest in peace Mr Douglas).

He dedicated himself to strengthening the country’s media, volunteering at scores of local newsrooms and coaching an incalculable number of reporters and students. Mr. Douglas spent most of his waking hours guiding Sierra Leone’s journalists with a patience and perseverance that seemed inexhaustible. Many viewed his work with scepticism, but he never lost his resolve. He lived a modest life in his adopted homeland, in solidarity with those whose lives were a daily negotiation with scarcity. His wardrobe was a collection of African wax cloth shirts. Jollof rice was his favourite dish. He gave away much of his income to local families to pay for school fees, transport costs and other expenses.

He remained unabashedly Canadian, a vibrant splash of red and white in a landscape of green and blue. He manoeuvred a large red motorcycle through the country, marked unmistakably by the maple-leaf flag he had added to his helmet. In a city where Canada has no formal embassy, Mr. Douglas became an unofficial ambassador, extending generous friendship and support to his fellow Canadians. As news of his death broke, Canadians across Africa lauded him, as did Sierra Leone’s journalists. “He would stay long hours into the night at our office editing stories,” recalled Kelvin Lewis, former president of the country’s journalist association and owner of Awoko Newspaper, where Mr. Douglas volunteered for many years. “Stephen always wanted to help people, always trying to work with journalists to make them better. He was such a genuinely kind man, so caring, and would go out of his way to help at any chance.”

In his final years, Mr. Douglas immersed himself in trying to unravel the 2018 murder of an American citizen who had been visiting her father, a well-known politician in Freetown. Planning to write a book on the case, he made regular visits to the country’s largest prison to bring food and books to the man who was charged with the murder. He was convinced there was more to the case than the authorities had said. It was a search for a truth that seemed to slip further away with each day – just as his death, with its cloud of unanswered questions, has become an enigma of the kind that he pursued throughout his Sierra Leone life.

Courtesy:With a report from Geoffrey York in Johannesburg, theglobeandmail.com