News

Head-on train crash kills dozens in Greece

1, March 2023

Head-on train crash kills dozens in Greece 0

At least 36 people were killed and another 66 injured after two trains collided head-on near the Greek city of Larissa, authorities said, as emergency services raced Wednesday to find survivors among the charred wreckage.

Several carriages were almost completely destroyed in the collision between a passenger train and a freight train just before midnight on Tuesday, with at least one car appearing to catch fire and trap passengers inside.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life,” said one rescue worker, emerging from the wreckage. “It’s tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies.”

Several cars had overturned or caught fire when they came off the tracks in the impact, leaving a tangled mess of metal and shattered glass.

The passenger train, carrying 350 people, had been travelling from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Health Minister Thanos Plevris said most passengers were “young people”, with the train carrying many students returning to Thessaloniki after a long holiday weekend.

“It was a nightmare… I’m still shaking,” 22-year-old passenger Angelos told AFP.

“Fortunately we were in the penultimate car and we got out alive. There was a fire in the first cars and complete panic.”

“The collision was like a huge earthquake.”

“I was stained with blood from other people who were injured near me,” a passenger named Lazos told the newspaper Protothema.

Source: AFP

Yaoundé: Finance Minister Motaze banned from leaving country amid Martinez Zogo murder inquiry

28, February 2023

Yaoundé: Finance Minister Motaze banned from leaving country amid Martinez Zogo murder inquiry 0

Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze has been banned from leaving the country amid an investigation into his alleged involvement in the assassination of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered late today that a prosecutor is seeking charges against Mr Motaze, who has been asked to explain his links with a key suspect in the killing, French Cameroun business tycoon Amougou Belinga.

Records show the two men had multiple phone calls just hours before the assassination, prosecutors say.

Minister Motaze reportedly wrote to Prime Minister Dion Ngute asking for permission to lead a delegation abroad for the signing with Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland, an amendment to a contract on the program to secure customs revenues.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that on February 23, 2023, the Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office wrote to Minister Motaze to inform him that Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute has rejected his request.

Kidnapped during the night of January 17, 2023 in Yaoundé, the journalist and whistleblower Arsène Salomon Mbami Zogo alias Martinez Zogo, was found on January 22, lifeless and his body mutilated.

Motaze’s name and that of Justice Minister Laurent Esso were mentioned during the hearings related to the murder of Martinez Zogo. The Head of State could at any time give his high approval for the auditioning of these two ministers.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Buea: Gunmen attack Molyko primary school

27, February 2023

Buea: Gunmen attack Molyko primary school 0

Three gun men attacked a private primary school in Molyko, Buea, on February 22, at about 11 am.

Following the attack, the head teacher was kidnapped by the attackers after verbal threats had been sent to the school proprietor.

The gunmen fired several warning shots into the air as they left the school campus.

Security forces arrived the scene only when the perpetrators had gone.

The head teacher who had been abducted was released the following morning after a ransom was paid.

By Cecilia Manjang

Buea Race of Hope: Nineteen athletes wounded after blasts

25, February 2023

Buea Race of Hope: Nineteen athletes wounded after blasts 0

Nineteen athletes were being treated for blast injuries on Saturday after multiple small explosions during a running race in part of western Cameroon where English-speaking separatists are fighting government forces, a local doctor said.

There was no immediate comment from authorities in the town of Buea in South-West Region, where 529 athletes were running up the highest mountain in West and Central Africa as they competed in the Mount Cameroon Race of Hope.

The armed wing of Ambazonia Governing Council, one of the separatist militia groups, claimed responsibility for the blasts.

“Our primary target was the Cameroon elite forces … that were providing security for the athletes. We will not allow Cameroon to continue its occupation,” the group’s spokesperson Capo Daniel told Reuters.

A video shared widely on social media that Reuters was not immediately able to verify showed spectators cheering on a runner before dashing for cover when a small explosion goes off in the distance. Another video showed a different explosion going off near a pack of runners elsewhere on the route.

“Nineteen athletes have been brought to our facility with injuries. We have operated upon three of them. Their condition is stable and we haven’t recorded any deaths,” Martin Mokake, the director of Buea Regional Hospital, told Reuters by phone.

One of those being treated was a Gabonese citizen, he said.

Participants in the race included athletes from East, Central and Northern Africa and France.

The separatist insurgency began in Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West and South-West regions in 2016 when teachers and lawyers protested against their perceived marginalisation by the primarily French-speaking national government.

A violent crackdown by security forces helped radicalise the movement, and the ensuing conflict has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced nearly 1 million.

Source: Reuters

Thomas Sankara reburied in Burkina Faso

23, February 2023

Thomas Sankara reburied in Burkina Faso 0

Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, was reburied Thursday, eight years after his body was exhumed as part of an investigation.

Sankara’s body, and those of the 12 people who died with him, were reburied at the site of his assassination, which has since become a memorial for Sankara featuring a life-size statue of the former leader pumping his fist in the air.

Soldiers and community leaders paid tribute during a ceremony Thursday, some posing for pictures by Sankara’s coffin. All the coffins were draped in Burkina Faso flags with a photo beside them.

Sankara and the others were gunned down in the capital, Ouagadougou, during a 1987 coup and buried hastily, their bodies only allowed to be dug up in 2015, after the ousting of former President Blaise Compaore.

Sankara, a charismatic Marxist leader with a reputation as “Africa’s Che Guevara,” came to power in 1983 at the age of 33 after he and Compaore led a leftist coup that overthrew a moderate military faction. But in 1987, Compaore turned on his former friend in a coup in which he seized power and then ruled the country for 30 years.

Last year, Compaore, who now lives in Ivory Coast, was tried in absentia and convicted of complicity in their murders. A Burkina Faso military tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. Compaore’s right-hand man, Gilbert Diendere, and former spy chief Tousma Yacinthe Kafando were also given life sentences. Eight other people were found guilty of a range of charges including giving false testimonies and complicity in undermining state security.

While Sankara’s family was happy that he was finally laid to rest, they said the place of burial was like a slap in the face because of the horrors that occurred there.

“That place is painful for us to put our feet there. A lot of people were tortured there and crimes committed there and murders,” his younger brother Paul Sankara told The Associated Press by phone from the United States where he lives. The family asked the government to bury him elsewhere but was told it was at the army’s discretion since he was a soldier.

The West African nation has been struggling with a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 2 million people and sowed division among the population leading to two coups last year. The current junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, has been likened by some to Sankara, as an anti-imperialist pan-African leader, and is using the reburial to increase support, analysts say.

“With undertaking a symbolic state funeral for Sankara, Traore aims to boost his image by appealing to the collective memory of the young revolutionary leader that still shapes society in Burkina Faso,” said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk intelligence firm.

Source: AP

La Republique collapse in Southern Cameroons inevitable notwithstanding French support

23, February 2023

La Republique collapse in Southern Cameroons inevitable notwithstanding French support 0

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government says the French Cameroun regime is doomed to collapse, and the support coming from its backers in France will not change the regime’s inevitable fate in Southern Cameroons.

Comrade Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Wednesday, a day after the Francophone dominated Cameroon government military announced that its soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons have killed dozens of Amba fighters in the North West Region. Yerima warned that the occupying French Cameroun regime is some few months away from falling apart in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima also warned Southern Cameroonians participating in the French Cameroun teleguided senatorial elections of severe consequences and that the Biya French Cameroun regime is not worth their investment.

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader said that even though France, as Yaounde’s main strategic ally, can continue supporting Biya and his criminal gangs and pressuring pro Yaoundé English speaking Cameroonians to accept the present status quo, the decline and ultimate collapse of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime cannot be prevented.

Yerima further slammed the French Cameroun regime for pulling out of the Canada peace talks and its continued military operations in Southern Cameroons.

By Nelly Epupa with additional reporting from Chi Prudence Asong

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Scores killed in battles with Amba fighters ahead of Senate Elections

22, February 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Scores killed in battles with Amba fighters ahead of Senate Elections 0

Cameroon’s military says it has killed scores of armed separatists in clashes this month and at least 15 have surrendered. The rebels, who vowed to disrupt March senate elections in Cameroon’s western regions, claim to have killed scores of government troops.

Ndop district residents in Cameroon’s restive Northwest region say seven bodies were found in bushes Tuesday morning, following heavy fighting between separatist rebels and government troops.

Ndop businessman Anyam Edison Penn said the clashes halted trade in Ngoketunjia, where Ndop is located. He spoke to VOA from Ndop via a messaging app.

“For the past weeks fighting in Ngoketunjia has been very very intensive between the separatists and the defense forces, and this has been affecting so many lives, so many persons killed and it has been a burden on our side,” Penn said. “Thousands of people were like they were in a cage. I pray and hope that the crisis will be resolved so that we, the civilians, should not be suffering like this.”

Cameroon’s Anglophone separatists have vowed to disrupt the March 12 elections for Senate and last month killed two election officials.

Cameroon’s government said at least 15 rebel fighters were killed in ongoing clashes this month around Ndop while the military said it killed at least 30 rebels in other northwestern towns.

Cameroon’s highest-ranking official in the area, Handerson Quetong Kongeh, said military raids Monday night targeted at least five separatist camps.

Cameroon’s military acknowledged it took casualties in the fighting but would not give any figures and has not responded to requests for comment.

Despite the threats and ongoing clashes, Cameroon officials say election preparations will continue.

The military said about 15 rebels surrendered. The separatist conflict broke out in 2016 when Anglophone Cameroonians protested discrimination by the Francophone majority.

Cameroon’s military responded with a crackdown and rebels took up arms with the aim of carving out an independent state they call Ambazonia.

The U.N. says fighting has since killed at least 3,500 people and displaced 750,000.

Canada, which is attempting to negotiate an end to the conflict, says more than 6,000 people have been killed and the unrest has deprived 600,000 children of education.

Source: VOA

Amougou Belinga celebrates his birthday at SED: Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Stripped of their weapons

21, February 2023

Amougou Belinga celebrates his birthday at SED: Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Stripped of their weapons 0

Nobody in Yaoundé knows for how long he has been connected to Etoudi. However, the expansion of the Anecdote Press Group with the creation of a private television channel Vision 4, Vision Finance Bank, a higher education institute, the establishment of a media house in Paris, France and in the Central African Republic made Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga within a very short period of time one of the most prominent businessmen in Sub Saharan Africa.

The so-called Francophone media guru and business tycoon is also in the news because of his extravagant lifestyle…

Everything changed in Amougou Belinga’s life and things took a dramatic u-turn after January 17, 2023, the date of the kidnapping and brutal murder of Martinez Zogo, a French Cameroun whistleblower journalist who was particularly angry at Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, whom he presented as an embezzler of public funds.

Amougou Belinga was a humble man before money came

On the trail of Martinez Zogo’s alleged killers and sponsors, investigators in Yaoundé arrested the CEO of Vision 4 on Monday, February 6, 2023.

The 58 year old Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga has been in police drag-net now for two weeks and for the first time in his life, he celebrated his birthday on February 20 in a cell at the Secretariat of State for Defense in Yaoundé.

The media world is now waiting to see the end of Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group think that one of Etoudi’s powerful men has had a Humpty Dumpty great fall and he will never be back in form.

Mr. Amougou Belinga reportedly has some friends and enemies deep within the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime in Yaoundé.

Prominent on the list of friends is General Ivo Desancio Yenwo, the Director of Presidential Security who intelligence sources have revealed helped in making Amougou Belinga a billionaire.

His business empire has also received patronage from Justice Minister Laurent Esso, a senior Biya acolyte.

In the register of enemies of the CEO of the press group l’Anecdote, is the Minister-Secretary General at the presidency of the Republic Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Galax Yves Landry Etoga, head of the national gendarmerie and Martin Mbarga Nguele, General Delegate for National Security.

By Nelly Epupa with files from Staff Lady Rita Akana

Cameroon’s Justice System:   Amougou Belinga’s fate hangs in the balance

17, February 2023

Cameroon’s Justice System:   Amougou Belinga’s fate hangs in the balance 0

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

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Ngarbuh Victims Await Trial Three Years After Massacre

16, February 2023

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Ngarbuh Victims Await Trial Three Years After Massacre 0

Three years ago, we uncovered a gruesome massacre in Cameroon’s northwest region. Government forces and armed ethnic Fulani killed at least 21 civilians in Ngarbuh village, including 13 children and one pregnant woman. One survivor, who witnessed the killing of his entire family, including seven children, told us: “I saw the military shooting my family members one by one as they attempted to escape. They shot our mother first. Then, they shot the children, whose bodies all fell on her.”

The Ngarbuh killings were one of the Cameroonian security forces’ worst atrocities since late 2016 when the crisis erupted in the country’s Anglophone regions, where armed separatists are seeking independence for the country’s minority Anglophone population.

The government initially denied that its security forces were responsible and embarked on a smear campaign against human rights organizations and media that exposed the massacre. But following international pressure, President Paul Biya established a commission of inquiry on March 1, 2020. The government then admitted its security forces bear some responsibility and announced the arrest of at least two soldiers and a gendarme in June 2020.

The Ngarbuh trial opened on December 17, 2020, before a military court in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. When the trial was announced, it was a welcome step and was seen as a test case that could break the perpetual cycles of impunity in Cameroon.

But since then, there has been little progress. The trial, meant to restart last November, is now slated to resume February 16, just two days after the 3rd anniversary of the massacre. The continued slow pace raises real concerns about whether the military justice system can deliver justice, and if so, when? Additionally, the location of the trial in Yaoundé, 450 kilometers from Ngarbuh, means there will be limited to no access and participation for victims’ families and potential witnesses.

The Ngarbuh massacre was not an isolated event in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. Since February 14, 2020, numerous civilians have been killed by both government forces and separatists. While other blatant killings have generated inquiries, the only constant over the years has been the lack of accountability for the growing number of human rights abuses committed by both sides.

The resumption of the trial this week offers another opportunity to demonstrate that the military system can deliver accountability and send a signal to would-be violators that these types of crimes are taken seriously. If it doesn’t, the message to the victims’ families will be that the military has little interest in justice.

Culled from Human Rights Watch

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