Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga was on Wednesday August 9, 2023 auditioned at the Yaoundé Military Court. The process which began in the early hours lasted till 5:00pm when Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga was taken back to his new home inside the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison.

This came barely days after Reporters Without Borders published new revelations on the Martinez Zogo case – one indicting Amougou as master of the show.

While at the Yaoundé Military Court, Magistrate Aimeé Florence Sikati tried bringing out the truth from Belinga surrounding the kidnapping, torture and murder of Martinez Zogo.

Several other persons were also questioned including Zogo’s wife and some journalists.

Meantime, Zogo’s family has expressed dissatisfaction with the way the case is being handled.

“We are unsatisfied with the way the case is being handled. It is completely slow and we are not in contact with the Judge. We don’t also have any information on how the case is going. What we have noted is that some elements in the case file have disappeared. How come? Do they want to kill the case as they normally do? It hurts a lot. We want that the case accelerates and justice be served to our brother. Those incriminated should be heavily punished for the gruesome killing of Martinez,” Zogo’s sister, Nadege Essala Mbani said firmly.

It should be recalled, it was on March 14, 2023 that Amougou Belinga and others, suspected of orchestrating and executing Martinez Zogo were kept in temporary detention and no verdict has been passed till date.

Culled from Cameroon News Agency with additional editing

Cameroon held a funeral in Limbe for the five divisional delegates killed by gunmen in June 2021 in Ndian Division. Mourners paid their respects to the five victims at the Centenary Stadium.

The sight of their coffins, dotted with flowers and lined in front of mourners, drew tears from family members, locals and officials.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killings but authorities say the five were murdered by members of a Southern Cameroons Self Defense group known as Expendables 100.

Last year, a source at the SDO’s office in Mundemba hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that it suspected the attackers had links to the Atanga Nji Boys, an offshoot of the Cameroon government military which is waging a war against Ambazonia fighters.

Some family members accused Cameroon government authorities of making empty promises to find the killers.

Yaoundé maintains that a former fighter who witnessed the gruesome murder took the military to the unmarked grave.

By Rita Akana in Limbe

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Texas A&M Law School Immigrant Rights Clinic and Civil Rights Clinic filed a case in the District of Columbia on behalf of two Cameroonian men abused by U.S. immigration detention officials and then deported back to persecution. The case, filed yesterday evening, seeks damages and return to the United States for a fair opportunity to apply for asylum.

As relayed in the complaint, detention officers pepper sprayed the two men and locked them in solitary confinement for peacefully protesting racist targeting by guards and denial of medical care. U.S. officials then deported the two men and illegally gave their asylum documents to Cameroonian officials, who imprisoned them as traitors. A 2022 Human Rights Watch report detailed the experiences of the plaintiffs and others who endured similar abuses.

According to one of the plaintiffs, JKA, “My life will never be the same because of the physical and mental pain I experienced in immigration detention in the United States. I am filing this lawsuit because I want to hold the United States government accountable for what it did to me.” Another plaintiff, TBF, says, “When I was a detained immigrant in the U.S., there were no human rights. I was tortured and there was no intervention to protect me. I plead that the world sees our fellow brothers and sisters who are detained as human beings in need of help.”

“The plight of my fellow Cameroonian brothers stands as a stark reminder of the hardships and injustices we face as Black Immigrants abused by U.S immigration enforcement,” said Daniel Tse, Founder of the Cameroon Advocacy Network and Legal Fellow at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “As an advocate for justice on behalf of my fellow Cameroonians, I denounce the unjustifiable cruelty they endured simply for pursuing the human right to apply for asylum. Because the U.S. government refuses to rectify its wrongdoing by bringing these men back for a fair opportunity to apply for asylum, we are going to court to seek accountability, restitution, and justice.”

“The government used unlawful force, solitary confinement, and deportation to retaliate against two Black asylum seekers who resisted their harsh and discriminatory confinement in immigration jail through an organized hunger strike,” said Samah Sisay, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Our clients have suffered and are fighting for redress and an end to these wrongful acts.”

Source: Blackstarnews

At least three people were killed overnight into Tuesday in a terrorist attack on an internally displaced persons (IDP) site in Cameroon’s restive Far North region, according to local and security sources.

The attack on the Bakarisse IDP site in Kerawa locality was carried out by militants of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, a local resident said on condition of anonymity.

“They (Boko Haram) killed three displaced persons and wounded a woman. Our vigilante members retaliated and killed one of the terrorists,” the source said.

Bakarisse site hosts thousands of the displaced people who panicked after the attack. Security sources said some people had left the camp since attacks intensified in January.

Source: Xinhuanet

Military officials in Cameroon say they have found a mass grave near the border with Nigeria containing the bodies of nine civilians, including five government officials, who were abducted by rebels in June 2021. Government troops were led to the mass grave by a separatist fighter who participated in the killing, but surrendered and joined a disarmament and demobilization center.

Cameroon’s military says government troops exhumed the bodies from the mass grave, located about 20 kilometers from Ekondo Titi, a town in Ndian, an administrative unit on the border with Nigeria.

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Nguele said he led several dozen Cameroon government troops to the mass grave Saturday. He said they exhumed the bodies after a reconnaissance mission to the area, which is prone to regular separatist attacks. He said Cameroon’s government has asked the military to transport the human remains to Buea, capital of the English-speaking Southwest Region for families to identify and collect for reburial. Nguele said Cameroon can now confirm the individuals as dead and no longer missing.

Nguele said the victims were abducted in Ndian by a self-proclaimed separatist general known as 10 Kobo on June 15, 2021.

At the time, separatists claimed responsibility on social media and said the officials were abducted for collaborating with Cameroon’s central government in Yaounde.

One of the officials, Mabia Johnson Mudika, was killed three days later, while the other five were considered missing until the mass grave was found over the weekend.

Last month, Tamaya Clinton, a 24-year-old separatist fighter who disarmed and surrendered to authorities in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, said the officials were killed by separatist fighters. He promised to take government troops to the grave where the officials were buried.

The military did not say if Tamaya took them to the mass grave or not.

Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of Cameroon’s Southwest Region, said the discovery of the mass grave once more indicates how brutal and insensitive separatist fighters are to civilians. He said the English-speaking elite should go to their towns and villages and ask fighters who are still hiding with weapons in the bush to surrender and be forgiven or otherwise be killed by government troops. He said the military will track fighters who have killed civilians and government officials since the separatist crisis erupted.

Bilai spoke on Cameroon state broadcaster CRTV.

Cameroon’s separatist crisis conflict began in 2017, after teachers and lawyers in the Northwest and Southwest Regions, where English is the predominant language, protested alleged discrimination from the country’s French-speaking majority.

The military responded with a crackdown and fighters took up weapons claiming to defend English-speaking civilians from what separatists described as extreme military brutality.

The conflict has killed an estimated 6,000 people and displaced more than three quarters of a million, according to the International Crisis Group.

Source: VOA

Yaoundé officials claim six Southern Cameroons Restoration fighters, including General Tiger were killed by Cameroon government forces in Bafut on Sunday August 6, 2023.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands General Tiger reportedly left the Bafut 7 Kata and joined the pro French Cameroun Atanga Nji Boys in April of 2022 and was a chartered member of the kidnapping and torture gang in the North West region.

Commenting on the current state of the Southern Cameroons uprising, the Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government Dabney Yerima said the war “could take years.”

By Ewang Miriam Metchane