r army officers were identified as being behind the coup plot. The coup plot led to the execution of seventeen soldiers, including Seargent Mohamed Lamin Bangura, Colonel Yahya Kanu and Lieutenant Colonel Kahota M.S. Dumbuya. Several prominent members of the Momoh government who had been in detention at the Pa Demba Road prison, including former inspector general of police Bambay Kamara were also executed. On 5 July 1994 the deputy NPRC leader Lieutenant Solomon Musu was arrested and sent into exile after he was accused of planning a coup to topple Strasser. Strasser replaced Musa as deputy NPRC chairman with Captain Julius Maada Bio, who was instantly promoted by Strasser to Brigadier.
The NPRC proved to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh-led APC government in repelling the RUF. More and more of the country fell to RUF fighters, and by 1994 they held much of the diamond-rich Eastern Province and were at the edge of Freetown. In response, the NPRC hired several hundred mercenaries from the private firm Executive Outcomes. Within a month they had driven RUF fighters back to enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders, and cleared the RUF from the Kono diamond producing areas of Sierra Leone
On 16 January 1996 after about four years in power, Strasser was arrested in a coup by his fellow NPRC soldiers, led by his deputy Brigadier Julis Maada Bio. Strasser was immediately flown into exile in a military helicopter to Conakry, Guinea. In his first public broadcast to the nation following the 1996 coup, Brigadier Bio stated that his support for returning Sierra Leone to a democratically elected civilian government and his commitment to ending the Sierra Leone civil war were his motivations for the coup.
Return to civilian rule
Promises of a return to civilian rule were fulfilled by Bio, who handed power over to Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), after the conclusion of elections in early 1996
