Three leaders of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone were sentenced to dozens of years in prison by the war crimes court on Wednesday, according to information monitored in Lagos.
Under the court ruling, RUF leader Issa Sesay will serve 52 years in prison, the group's former commander Morris Kallon will spend 39 years and another leading member Augustine Gbao will be jailed for 25 years.
The court held the three men responsible for a decade of war atrocities including killings, rapes and mutilations.
The rebel leaders were found guilty of most of the 18 individual counts they were facing, although they denied some of the charges.
The sentences came after the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted them in February of war crimes.
The special court was established in 2002 at the end of a civil war which erupted in 1991 in the West African country.
Up to 120,000 people were killed and tens of thousands of others mutilated in the bloodshed.
The court has also put on trial former Liberian President Charles Taylor for his involvement in the civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
Taylor, 59, is accused of providing arms and other assistance to the rebels in Sierra Leone in return for diamonds during the civil war in his own country between 1989 and 2003.
Taylor is being tried in The Hague for security reasons.