Editor's Choice Pictures of the Day - Sierra Leone After Charles Taylor - April 25, 2012

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Reuters Photographer Finbarr O'Reilly travelled to Sierra Leone to take a look at the country ten years after the civil war. The U.N. war crimes court trying Charles Taylor for atrocities in Sierra Leone will deliver its verdict on Thursday. Prosecutors allege Taylor, from his base in neighbouring Liberia, directed and armed the Sierra Leonian rebels and so bears responsibility. Sierra Leone's 11-year conflict from 1991-2002 left over 50,000 dead and became a byword for gratuitous violence, especially the amputation of limbs. A decade later, the West African nation is peaceful, but among the world's poorest. It is due to hold elections in November.

 

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Girls selling sweets watch from their makeshift kiosk as other boys and girls their age (not pictured) attend a school in the city of Makeni in Sierra Leone April 20, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Sia Mondeh, 12, who would like to become a lawyer, poses for a portrait in Koidu in eastern Sierra Leone April 21, 2012. Mondeh has no money for school fees.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

An artisanal miner pans for diamonds in the town of Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone April 21, 2012. Fighting in the 1991-2002 civil war was focused on controlling the diamond fields, and the profits from the stones provided the funding to the warring sides.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Komba Nyanku (L), 12, who wants to become a lawyer, and his friend, Abdoulaye Marrah, 12, who dreams of being a pilot, pose for a portrait in the town of Koidu in eastern Sierra Leone April 21, 2012. Neither of the boys have money to pay school fees.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

A headstone marks a mass grave of rebel victims in the village of Bomaru, where the conflict started in 1991, in eastern Sierra Leone April 22, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Students say a prayer before going to class at the Every Nation Academy private school in the city of Makeni in Sierra Leone, April 20, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Graffiti scrawled by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels is seen in the town of Kailahun in eastern Sierra Leone April 23, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

A woman uses a net to catch fish in a pool of water near the city of Makeni in Sierra Leone April 20, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

A sheet advertising a traditional medicine doctor's services hangs outside his home by the roadside in the town of Small Sefoda in eastern Sierra Leone April 22, 2012.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Kadiatu Kauma, 24, sits in a hospital with gunshot wounds to her arm, stomach and back after police opened fire on a crowd of protestors in the mining town of Bumbuna April 19, 2012.  A woman was shot and killed and several others were wounded when police opened fire on a crowd protesting wages and working conditions at the British mining company African Minerals on Wednesday, according to witnesses, hospital staff and police officials.

 

FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

People living in makeshift apartments at an abandoned former presidential palace look out from a balcony in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown April 24, 2012.