FREETOWN Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Eight persons convicted of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone were transferred to Rwanda over the weekend to begin serving their sentences.

    Amid tight security, the eight men were flown by helicopter from the special court compound to Freetown International Airport, where they boarded a UN-chartered plane for Kigali, Rwanda, the court said on Monday.

    The plane departed at 3:50 p. m. local time on Saturday, carrying the convicts and officials from the special court's security and detention sections.

    The prisoners included three former leaders of Sierra Leone's rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao.

    The transfer came after the court last week upheld the sentences given earlier in the year to the three RUF leaders. Sesay, Kallon and Gbao were respectively given a jail term of 52 years, 40 years and 25 years by the UN-backed tribunal in the West African country.

    The three men were already sentenced in April by the court, which held them 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 verdict in April was made after the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted them in February of war crimes. The court was established in 2002 at the end of the civil war which erupted in 1991 in Sierra Leone.

    Among other prisoners sent to Rwanda were three former leaders of Sierra Leone's Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), including Alex Tamba Brima, Ibrahim Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu, as well as two former leaders of the Civil Defense Forces (CDF) Moinina Fofana and Allieu Kondewa.

    The prisoners will be incarcerated at Rwanda's Mpanga Prison under an agreement signed between the special court and the Rwandan government in March.

    The facility where they will be held was originally built to house persons convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and meets the international standards for treatment of prisoners, the court said.

    At present, no facility in Sierra Leone meets the required international standards.