 FACT: The mercenary intervention in the Sierra Leone civil war  (Executives Outcomes PMC) began in May, 1995 and ended in January,  1997. They were long since gone by the time of the RUF invasion of  Freetown in January 1999 when the movie is set. It was actually a  combination of British and UN troops who brought the war to an end  in 2001. Possibly made deliberately to avoid associating EO with the  fictional mercenaries, whose activities were much more sinister.