FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) – A U.N.-backed court Wednesday found three former leaders of a Sierra Leone junta guilty of war crimes, the first convictions stemming from the country’s decade-long civil war.

The court found the three defendants guilty of 11 of the 14 charges, including acts of terrorism, using child soldiers, enslavement, rape and murder, among others. They were acquitted of charges of sexual slavery and “other inhumane acts,” said Peter Andersen, spokesman for the Sierra Leone Special Court.

The tribunal was set up following the end of fighting in 2002 to prosecute the worst offenders in a conflict that ravaged the small West African nation and spilled over into neighboring Liberia. The court has indicted 12 people, including former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is charged with backing Sierra Leonean rebels.

The three convicted Wednesday were accused of heading a junta that raped women, burned villages, conscripted thousands of child soldiers and forced others to work as laborers in diamond mines. They had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu were indicted in 2003 as the alleged leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, a group of former military officers who toppled Sierra Leone’s government in 1997 and then teamed up with rebels to control the country until 1998, according to the indictment.

“It’s the first time that an international court has issued a verdict on child recruitment,” said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Ms. Dufka, an expert on the conflict, said the junta committed their worst atrocities after they were pushed into the bush by an international peacekeeping force in 1998.

They started “punishing the civilian population as a whole,” Ms. Dufka said.

An estimated 500,000 people were killed, mutilated or suffered other atrocities during Sierra Leone’s conflict, fueled by the illicit diamond trade.

Some have criticized the Special Court trials for being too slow. Three defendants have died since being indicted – two of natural causes and one killed in what many believe was a move to silence him.

Mr. Taylor’s trial opened earlier this month in The Hague, Netherlands. Although he is being tried by the Special Court, the proceedings are taking place outside Sierra Leone because of fears the case could trigger fresh violence in the region.

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Associated Press Writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.