Several people were arrested in Cameroon, “strongly suspected” to be implicated in the murder of a journalist kidnapped and then “murdered” after having been obviously tortured in mid-January, the presidency announced on Thursday February 2.
Martinez Zogo was the general manager of the private radio station Amplitude FM and star host of a daily program, “Embouteillage”, in which he regularly denounced racketeering and corruption in this iron-fisted Central African country. for more than forty years by the same man, President Paul Biya, and his all-powerful party.
Abducted on January 17 by unknown persons in the suburbs of the capital Yaoundé in front of a gendarmerie station, Arsène Salomon Mbani Zogo, says “Martinez”50, was found dead five days later. “His body has obviously suffered significant abuse”announced the government.
“Establish the identity of all persons involved”
Mr. Biya ordered “a joint gendarmerie-police investigation” on the“assassination” by Martinez Zogo and “investigations (…) have, to date, led to the arrest of several people whose involvement in this heinous crime is strongly suspected. Others remain sought »said Thursday in a press release the Minister of State and Secretary General to the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.
“The current hearings and the legal proceedings which will ensue will make it possible to circumscribe the degree of involvement of each other and to establish the identity of all those involved”, he promises. The press release does not provide any additional details.
The murder of Martinez Zogo had aroused strong emotion in Cameroon but also abroad. In a column published Thursday by the French newspaper The worldabout twenty Cameroonian personalities, in particular the writer Calixthe Beyala, or the intellectual Achille Mbembe, share their “deep concern at the violent turn of the public debate”.
They deplore in particular that, since the discovery of the journalist’s body, “no official information has been given by the authorities on the progress of the investigation”denouncing a “a long tradition of trivializing impunity and accepting atrocity aimed at scaring and diverting citizens from their duty to monitor the quality of the management of public affairs”.