sident Kabbah took power with a great promise of ending the civil war. President Kabbah open dialogue with the RUF and invited RUF leader Foday Sankoh for peace negotiation.
AFRC junta
On 25 May 1997, seventeen soldiers in the Sierra Leone army led by Corporal Tamba Gborie, loyal to the detained Major General Johnny Paul Koroma, launched a military coup which sent President Kabbah into exile in Guinea and they established the Armed Forces Revolutionay Council (AFRC). Corporal Gborie quickly went to the SLBS FM 99.9 headquarters in Freetown to announce the coup to a shocked nation and to alert all soldiers across the country to report for guard duty. The soldiers immediately released Koroma from prison and installed him as their chairman and Head of State. Koroma suspended the constitution, banned demonstrations, shut down all private radio stations in the country and invited the RUF to join the new junta government, with its leader Foday Sankoh as the Vice-Chairman of the new AFRC-RUF coalition junta government. Within days, Freetown was overwhelmed by the presence of the RUF combatants who came to the city in their thousands.
The Kamajors, a group of traditional fighters mostly from the Mende ethnic group under the command of deputy Defence Minister Samuel Hinga Norman, remained loyal to President Kabbah and defended the Southern part of Sierra Leone from the soldiers.
Kabbah's government and the end of civil war
After 10 months in office, the junta was overthrown by the Nigeria-led ECOMOG forces, and the democratically elected government of president Kabbah was reinstated in March 1998. On 12 October 1998 twenty five soldiers in the Sierra Leone army, including Corporal Tamba Gborie, Brigadier Hassan Karim Conteh, Colonel Abdul Karim Sesay and Major Kula Samba were executed after they were convicted at a court martial in Freetown for orchestrating the 1997 coup that overthrew President Kabbah
