a Supreme Council, consisting of the highest-ranking soldiers in the Junta government. On the same day the NPRC Junta took power, one of the coup leaders, Lieutenant Sahr Sandy, was assassinated—reportedly by Major Sim Turay, the head of Sierra Leone Military Intelligence, and a close ally of the deposed president. A heavily armed military manhunt took place across Sierra Leone to find Turay and others suspected to have participated in the assassination, forcing Turay to flee to Guinea. The NPRC Junta fought the RUF rebels, recaptured most of the RUF-held territories, and pushed the rebels back to the border with Liberia. The NPRC Junta maintained relations with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and strengthened support for Sierra Leone-based ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) troops fighting in Liberia. In December 1992, an alleged coup attempt against the NPRC administration of Strasser was foiled; it had aimed at freeing from detention Colonel Yahya Kanu, Lt-Colonel Kahota M.S. Dumbuya and former inspector-general of police Bambay Kamara. Seargent Mohamed Lamin Bangura and some junior army officers were identified as being behind the coup. Seventeen soldiers were executed, including Bangura, Kanu and 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, deputy NPRC leader Solomon Musa was arrested and sent into exile in Guinea. Musa was accused by Strasser, on the advice of high-ranking NPRC soldiers, that he had become too powerful and was a threat to Strasser. Musa, who was a close ally and childhood friend of Strasser, denied the allegation and claimed his accusers were the threat. Strasser replaced Musa as deputy NPRC chairman with Captain Julius Maada Bio, and immediately promoted him to brigadier. Due to internal divisions between soldiers loyal to Musa and those who supported Strasser's decision to oust him, the NPRC's campaign against the RUF became ineffectual. More and more of the country fell to RUF fighters, and by 1994 the RUF 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