Jamil Sahid Mohamed

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Jamil Sahid Mohamed (born 1936 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is a Sierra Leonean businessman who made millions of dollars in diamond trade. He was exiled from Sierra Leone twice amidst accusations of a coup plot in 1987 and later for war profiteering. Mohamed built his fortune smuggling diamonds out of Sierra Leone during the 1970s and 1980's.[1] He is widely regarded as the father of the Sierra Leone blood diamond trade.[2] As a result of his activities he became one of the richest men in Africa. Along with Siaka Stevens, he is widely regarded to have played a major role in the destruction of the Sierra Leone economy, leaving a senseless legacy of death and poverty in his wake. Sahid Mohamed was born in Freetown to a Sierra Leonean-Lebanese father and indigenous Sierra Leonean mother from the Mandingo ethnic group.[1][3]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Mohamed is the illegitimate son of a Sierra Leonean-Lebanese father and a Sierra Leonean mother from the Mandingo ethnic group. He was born and raised in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone.[2]

Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua's study of free market democracy and global instability stated: "the extent of Lebanese market dominance in Sierra Leone – historically and at present – is astounding."[2]

The Lebanese trading community was a leftover import from Sierra Leone's British Colonial era.[2] The fact that Mohamed's loyalties lay with this merchant minority would have dire consequences for the country when he later became the single most powerful private citizen in the country.[4]

Mohamed and his childhood friend, Sierra Leone-born Lebanese Nabih Berri would leave unimaginable destruction in their wake. Neither felt any real affinity with the country of their birth and saw it solely as a source of exploitation. The adult Berri became the leader of the Shiite Lebanese Amal Movement.[4]

[edit] Association with Siaka Stevens

Mohamed found a kindred spirit in President Siaka Stevens who was equally keen to exploit Sierra Leone's gold and diamonds resource for personal gain. In Sierra Leone's post-colonial era, Siaka Stevens association with Jamil Sayid Mohamed would have a dramatic effect on government policy. Both of them would, for a time, count themselves among Africa’s wealthiest men.[5]

The alliance of Stevens and Mohamed was one of convenience. Stevens had access but as a head of state he was prohibited from engage in commerce. He needed someone unscrupulous, cunning and ruthless to act on his behalf and Jamil Sayid Mohamed fit the bill.[2]

And so Mohamed became the greatest beneficiary of the kleptocracy established by President Siaka Stevens.[2] His stewardship of the president's personal finances made him the second most powerful man in Sierra Leone.[2] Together they plunged the economy of the fledgling nation in to a state of economic chaos. Mohamed encouraged Stevens to ally himself with the Lebanese merchant community who controlled a portion of the official diamond trade and also ran the majority of the unofficial diamond trade.[2] Stevens supported illegal diamond smuggling so much so that on November 3, 1969, $3.4 million dollars worth of the Sierra Leonean government's monthly production of diamonds vanished, allegedly at the order of Stevens and Mohamed.[6]

Siaka Stevens handed Mohamed the keys to Sierra Leone's economy.[5] The president granted Mohamed's National Trading Company a monopoly to import more than eighty-seven commodities.[2] And Steven's turned a blind eye as Mohamed become the foremost smuggler of the country's rare gems and minerals, raking in over $ 30 million dollars.[5] Mohamed was christened the "Diamond King".[5]

By 1971 the President had nationalized the De Beers monopoly.[7] Mohamed who had already managed to acquire 12% of the concession. By 1984 Mohamed bought the remaining shares from De Beers.

Tommy Taylor-Morgan, the Minister of Finance, warned that Sierra Leone was losing in excess of US$160 million of diamond income annually to diamond smuggling.[6] Corruption and smuggling reached such a level that official diamond production dropped significantly.

In 1985 national currency, the Leone was devalue by nearly 60 per cent and foreign exchange became scarce.[5] Between 1968 to 1985 Stevens and Mohamed successfully depleted the finances of Sierra Leone until they had rendered one of the world's biggest producers of diamonds and gold the poorest country on earth.[2]

[edit] Association with Joseph Saidu Momoh

When Steven's hand picked successor President Joseph Saidu Momoh first took power in Sierra Leone, he enjoyed a mutually beneficial business relationship with Mohamed so much so that Momoh initially relinquished more control to him.[7]

[edit] The Palestine Liberation Organization connections

In 1986 at Mohamed's behest, Momoh invited Yasir Arafat for a state visit. This was shortly after the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise liner, by PLO member Abu Abbas during which Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old American Jew, was pushed overboard. The purpose of Arafat's visit was to secure a deal with Momoh to run a Palestinian paramilitary training camp on one of the islands off Sierra Leone's coast. Arafat offered Momoh $8 million dollars but Momoh eventually caved to Western pressure and officially said no.[2] Instead he permitted Mohamed to keep a so-called "personal security force" which was made up of 500 Palestinian exiles. Momoh essentially permitted Mohamed to establish a private army of PLO militants.[2]

[edit] Thwarted coup and exile

When Momoh began talks with Israeli diamond traders, he invoked Mohamed's formidable wrath.[4] In 1987 Momoh discovered that Mohamed was plotting a coup d'état.[7] Mohamed had plans to restore the state of Palestine and felt that Momoh was in the way. When the plans surfaced, Mohamed was driven in to exile.[7] The Sierra Leonean government threatened to prosecute him on corruption charges and mismanagement of national resources.[4] He made his London home his permanent base. However his physical absence did little to diminish his ability to influence politics and continue his business activities in Sierra Leone.[4]

[edit] Sierra Leone Civil War 1991-2001

In 1991 Mohamed and his cohort Samih Osailly organized Sierra Leone's Lebanese diamond traders for the purpose of trafficking the blood diamonds acquired by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) from the mines the occupied in Sierra Leone.[4]

Mohamed's RUF partners pillaged and enslaved entire towns, submitting the survivors of their barbaric campaigns to forced labor mining diamonds. Mohamed's partnership with the RUF funded these activities as well as the RUF's practice of creating child soldiers.[2]

[edit] Operation No Living Thing

The RUF also used their profits to finance the barbarous atrocities of Operation No Living Thing waged, that left tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans maimed and murdered.[4] When the war spiraled out of control the majority of Mohamed's bootleg diamond consortium fled.[4]

[edit] Second exile

When the Civil War ended, Mohamed fled from the threat of war crimes prosecution over from the United Nations-supported Special Court for Sierra Leone. His old friend Nabih Berri arranged for him to escape to Lebanon on a diplomatic passport. By now Berri's Amal Movement was a full Hezbollah partner in Lebanon's legislature.[2]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b All Africa - subscription required
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Strategic Interests by J. Peter Pham, Ph.D., World Defense Review, 10 August 2006
  3. ^ Ernest Koroma Cannot be a Suitable Replacement for the Visionary SLPP Leadership by Alpha Saidu Bangura, The New People Online, September 4, 2007
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Hebollah and the West African diamond trade MEIB staff, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, June/July 2004
  5. ^ a b c d e A Tale of Two Villages: Of health and drugs, water and life, by Jonathan Blundell, New Internationalist No.152, October 1985.
  6. ^ a b Mineral Resources, Their Use and Their Impact on the Conflict and the Country, The New Citizen, March 16, 2007
  7. ^ a b c d Cry Freetown - History of Sierra Leone before 1990 by Sorious Samura

[edit] Further reading

  • Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy by J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
  • Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror by Douglas Farah

[edit] External links