Interest in the Martinez Zogo murder case will not be dying down anytime soon despite some delays due to lack of evidence against the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso, linking him to the murder.

After hearing the defendants and examining the reports of the commission of inquiry, the government commissioner this week felt that there was not enough evidence to send Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga and other co-accused to the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison known as Kondengui.

On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, the Yaoundé military court spent about ten hours to question about thirty people arrested in connection with the kidnapping of the whistleblower and journalist, Martinez Zogo, following his barbaric murder on January 17, 2023.

In order for justice to be served, the country’s president, Paul Biya, set up a commission of inquiry comprising police and gendarme officers which has arrested and interviewed for nearly three weeks, about thirty suspects at the Secretariat of State for Defense (SED).

Transferred to the military court for the first time in the early afternoon of Tuesday, February 14, the defendants were on their way to Kondengui when the government commissioner decided to send them back to the SED.

“We had already made arrangements to receive them at Kondengui (the Yaoundé neighborhood which houses the central and secondary prisons). But we also knew that the military prosecutor could decide to release them or ask that they be returned to the SED for further investigation. He chose the latter option because the reports indicate that there is something missing to place the defendants under arrest. This case is very complicated, with pressure coming from all sides,” commented a source close to the case.

To date, the influential businessman, Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, CEO of the media group, Anecdote, and alleged mastermind of the murder of Martinez Zogo, is spending his second week in custody at the SED.

On the other hand, some of his close collaborators, including Mr. Boulemou, Melanie Bibanga, Rose Olgane, and Ines Belinga were released on Monday, February 13, 2023 for undisclosed reasons.

Ivana Essomba, the wife of Bruno Bidjang, the General Manager of the Anecdote Group, is also breathing the air of freedom. They all spent four days at the SED.

 During their brief stay at the SED, they were interviewed in relation to the Martinez Zogo murder case.

During the various hearings, Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe, head of security and father-in-law of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga had, according to Equinoxe television, confirmed the statement made against the Vision 4 CEO by Lieutenant Colonel Justin Danwe, the Director of Operations at the Directorate General of External Research (DGRE).

 Cameroon Concord News learned that Colonel Raymond Etoundi Nsoe had confessed that the money wired into his account by Amougou Belinga was intended to pay off those who murdered   Martinez Zogo.

This testimony underscores that the media mogul played a key role in Mr. Zogo’s murder. But the latter has denied his involvement in this heinous crime since his arrest.

The tragic-comedy is still playing out and the public is growing very impatient with the manner in which the investigation is progressing.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Women in Ekona, a town in Muyuka sub-division of the South-west Region, mobilized themselves and protested at the Legion office in Buea, on February 15, 2023.

An unspecified number of women from Ekona, carrying peace plants, gathered in front of the legion office in Buea and requested for the release of their children who were arrested in Ekona on Sunday, February 12, 2023.

According to sources in Ekona, the youths were in a football field as there was an ongoing football match, when the military stormed the area and carried out a mass arrest. The following day, February 13, more arrests were made by the military.

Talking to another protester, she said that, the military made it a norm to arrest their sons and brothers for no reason and termed them separatist fighters.

After spending hours in front of the legion office and putting movement of vehicles on hold, the women decided to leave after they were told that their sons would be released and sent back home.

Residents of Ekona, especially young men have witnessed several assaults from both the military and the separatist fighters, since the start of the ongoing crisis and are yet to recover from the damages caused by the conflict.

By Cecilia Manjang

Justice Minister Laurent Esso, who had led several concocted high-profile CPDM government investigations into corruption, is now en route to jail for life for participating in the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Laurent Esso has been in the business of killing for decades and he is expected to be auditioned by state prosecutors at the Yaoundé Military Court following a decision by the 90-year-old President Biya.

Esso has been in the Biya government ever since the 90-year-old dictator came to power in 1982 and has led many high-profile investigations and crackdowns including a probe into the famous Albatross affair.

Recently, investigators admitted that Laurent Esso has a special relationship with business tycoon Amougou Belinga and that he reportedly participated in the killing of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Ahead of Amougou Belinga’s arrest in the nation’s capital Yaoundé, investigators also established that Laurent Esso had also been part of the criminal gang of the Francophone mafia boss and shared a telephone conversation with Belinga minutes before journalist Martinez Zogo was murdered.

Justice Minister Laurent Esso is also being accused of covering several cases of murder brought against Amougou Belinga.

The influence of Esso, who is yet to receive his summon within the ruling CPDM party has been described by top Biya aides as a cancer that should to be eliminated.

On Tuesday, Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups to the Yaoundé Military Court in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Like Laurent Esso, they all have been accused of being part of the clique that killed journalist Martinez Zogo.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, will surely be dying next year based on what he said on June 9, 2004, following an announcement that he had died in 2004.

Many Cameroonians have been looking forward to Mr. Biya’s death but they may have to wait for one year again as Mr. Biya is not in a rush to leave this planet.

On Monday, Mr. Biya celebrated his 90th birthday and he is in good shape. If anybody is expecting the 90-year-old Biya to die this year, then he might be hoping against hope.

Biya has repeatedly defended his record in the past and says that the government has made strides to return peace to the minority English-speaking regions where separatists are trying to form their own state.

He touts his Vision 2035 plan as a blueprint to boost development over the next 12 years.

Biya was born in Mvomeka’a, a village in the southern equatorial forest, in 1933, the year prohibition ended in the United States and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany.

After studying in Paris, he returned to Cameroon in 1962 as a top civil servant and quickly rose to become the Prime Minister in 1975. He was hand-picked as successor after the country’s first post-independence president Ahmadou Ahidjdo decided to resign suddenly in November 1982.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga the main suspect in the murder of whistleblower journalist Martinez Zogo, his hit man lieutenant colonel Justin Danwe and twenty other persons who have been in custody for more than a week at the Secretariat of State for Defense were on Tuesday transported in two security vehicles like common criminals and presented before judges at the Yaoundé Military Court located at the Ngoa Ekelle district in the nation’s capital.

Amougou Belinga and his gang were ferried in very old National Gendarmerie Toyota pickups in a move described by many political commentators in Yaoundé as the end of the preliminary investigation into the journalist Martinez Zogo affair.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the custody in SED was extended three times in compliance with the law. This week, it became mandatory to remove the suspects from SED.

Commenting on the happenings in Yaoundé, Cameroon Concord News Nelly Epupa opined that it is now up to the Military Court to issue new detention warrants for Amougou Belinga and his killer squad or to extend their stay in SED pending further investigation.

By Rita Akana with additional editing from Nelly Epupa

The Global Think Tank for Africa has once more put smiles on the faces of pupils in Mamfe following the donation of didactic materials to pupils who have been displaced due to the socio-political crisis in the country’s twoEnglish-speaking regions.

On Friday, February 10, 2023, the organization through the inspectorate of basic education in Mamfe donated didactic materials to some 50 internally displaced children drawn from 10 schools in mamfe.

This is the 4th batch of pupils to benefit from the largesse of the Global Think Tank for Africa, a Canada-based not-for-profit organization.

So far, some 250 IDPs have benefited from this humanitarian assistance and the project is on going as planned and it will be extended to villages close to Mamfe town where the fighting has stopped.

On behalf of the children, the Inspector of Basic Education for Mamfe, Mr. Herman Taku Arreyngang, extended his great appreciation and called on other external elites of Manyu Division to follow the example of the Global Think Tank.

Speaking over the phone from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the Executive Director of the Global Think Tank for Africa, Dr. Joachim Arrey, said that education was the foundational key to a child’s success and that it was important to help Africa’s future leaders to have that foundation so that they can acquire the skills and knowledge which will enable them to play their future leadership role.

“There is no better way of helping our children than by granting them the knowledge and skills they will need in future, Dr. Arrey said.

“No society will be ready for the future if its future leaders are not educated. While education alone will not grant the children the knowledge and leadership skills they will need tomorrow, it will however open their eyes and will grand them the foundation they need to live in a society which is increasingly a knowledge-based society,” he stressed.

He thanked the inspector of basic education and his team members who have been working tirelessly to help the children cope with the stress of leaving their natural environment.

“The teachers in Mamfe are really doing a good job. It is not easy to work in a war zone where the most vulnerable of our society are being threatened for going to school. I don’t know how to thank the authorities of basic education in Mamfe for their selfless services to our desperate children. May the Lord grant them more energy so that they can continue to do the great job they are doing,” Dr. Arrey said.

Asked about the program, Dr. Arrey said his organization would continue to support the IDPs for as long as the crisis continues.

By Thomas Ashu Atem

Edith Kah Walla was at the front of a crowd of students that welcomed Cameroon’s new president Paul Biya on a tour of the United States in 1984, full of hope that the young leader would bring stability and democracy, and end corruption.

Four decades on, Biya, now the world’s oldest leader, turns 90 on Monday. When he cuts a large cake, as he usually does on his birthday, Kah Walla, who was one of Biya’s challengers in the 2011 presidential election, will not be celebrating.

Her support for Biya evaporated over the years as economic progress stalled, dissenting voices were silenced, and the oil-producing country of 27 million people became split by a separatist uprising that has killed thousands, and Boko Haram attacks in the north.

At 90, Biya should spend his days playing with his grandchildren, she said.

“We live in a violent, brutal dictatorship. Over the past 40 years it has gotten more and more violent and brutal,” said Kah Walla, now a civil society activist. “These 40 years are a huge setback for Cameroon.”

HANDPICKED IN 1982

Biya has repeatedly defended his record in the past and says that the government has made strides to return peace to the minority English-speaking regions where separatists are trying to form their own state.

He touts his Vision 2035 plan as a blueprint to boost development over the next 12 years.

Biya was born in Mvomeka’a, a village in the southern equatorial forest, in 1933, the year prohibition ended in the United States and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany.

After studying in Paris, he returned to Cameroon in 1962 as a top civil servant and quickly rose to become the Prime Minister in 1975. He was hand-picked as successor after the country’s first post-independence president Ahmadou Ahidjdo decided to resign suddenly in November 1982.

In Africa, only President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea has ruled longer.

Millions still support Biya, although international observers have raised doubts about the fairness of elections that he routinely wins with ease. He spends long stretches in comfortable European hotels with his wife Chantal, frustrating many at home who believe the country’s crises require closer attention.

In 2020, he was not seen in public for weeks, prompting speculation that he had died of COVID-19.

Biya has ruled with openness and tolerance, said former minister Elvis Ngolle Ngolle. Old age, he said, has its advantages.

“The more you add up the age, the wiser you become – the more experienced, tolerant, logical you become,” Ngolle said.

AGE OLD WOES

Popular journalist and whistleblower Paul Chouta disagrees. Chouta, an outspoken critic of Biya, has been repeatedly beaten and tortured in recent years. He lives in fear: just the sound of his floorboards creaking sends him into a panic.

On March 9 last year, unknown assailants bundled him into the back of a car and drove him to an isolated spot near Yaounde airport. They beat him with stones and batons and left him for dead, he said.

Chouta is one of several reporters who have been beaten or killed. Two journalists were killed in the last month, prompting condemnation from the United Nations.

“If he (Biya) loves Cameroonians, let him fix things and go. The woes are deep,” Chouta told Reuters.

It is not only well-known reporters who are wary.

Kouam Yves, a motorcycle taxi driver, last week stood at a newspaper stand discussing the news headlines with colleagues. He struggles to make a living and is critical of Biya and what he describes as rampant corruption. But he paused as he spoke, worried about who might be listening.

“I can’t celebrate the Head of State’s birthday. For more than 20 years, I have not seen anything which we have executed in this country that went well like in other countries,” he said.

Source: Reuters

The mystery of who killed Brian Fombor, a young man stabbed to death by unknown assailants on June 2020 in the Omnisport district in Yaoundé while in the company of his girlfriend, Ivana Essomba suspected of being the mistress of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga took a new twist this week when investigators announced they have summoned Ernest Obama, Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga’s right-hand man at the time of the murder.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that investigators are trying to untangle the skein to know the role that Ernest Obama would have played in this tragic case.

Ivana Essomba seen here on photo attached to this report became on December 2022, the wife of Bruno Bidjang a young journalist Amougou Belinga recently appointed as General Manager of his privately-owned television channel, Vision 4.

Senior security officials in Yaoundé have hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that Brian Fombor’s alleged killers were part of a Vision 4 group led by Ernest Obama.

Ernest Obama who now moonlights as spokesperson for the Cameroon Football Federation is wanted in SED after a tip-off following the arrest of Belinga Amougou the owner of the L’Anecdote media group and Raymond Thomas Etoundi Nsoe, a retired colonel and former commander of the presidential guard.

The Francophone mafia boss and business tycoon including his top aide Bruno Bidjang are still being questioned. But Cameroon Intelligence Report has some intelligence that would suggest they have knowledge, perhaps some culpability on the murder of Brian Fombor.

Our Yaoundé city reporter said there was a high probability that Ernest Obama, an anti Anglophone extremist was the masked man who teleguided the murder of Brian Fombor.

Amougou Belinga, Paul Atanga Nji and Laurent Esso have been in the business of killing for decades and it is evidently clear that this time around state security apparatus appear to have done a poor job of protecting this CPDM gang.  

The Amougou Belinga-Martinez Zogo affair is extremely sensitive, with news of more arrests emerging.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Five employees of Cameroon’s main public agro-industrial group have died after their truck was attacked in the English-speaking west of the country plagued by separatist unrest, the company said Saturday.

“Unidentified armed men attacked a truck carrying workers” on Friday in Mondoni, about 30 kilometres (20 miles)  north-west of the economic capital Douala, Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) managing director Franklin Ngoni Njie said in a statement.

Five employees, including a woman, died and a further 44 were injured, one seriously, according to CDC, one of Cameroon’s largest employers specialising in rubber, banana and palm oil processing.

No motives were given for the ambush which state broadcaster CRTV reported was “suspected of being separatist fighters”.

Cameroon’s primarily English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have been gripped by conflict since separatists declared independence in 2017 after decades of grievances over perceived discrimination by the francophone majority.

President Paul Biya, who has ruled the central African nation with an iron fist for 40 years, has resisted calls for wider autonomy and responded with a crackdown.

The conflict in the former French colony has claimed more than 6,000 lives and forced more than one million people to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

Civilians have suffered abuses committed by both sides, NGOs and the United Nations say.

Eighty-percent of Cameroon’s population of 24 million is French-speaking.

The presence of the large Anglophone minority is a legacy of the colonial era.

Source: AFP