God the Politician

12. State Persecutors

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State Persecutors he trials of scores of persons accused by the Biya regime of masterminding the 1997 terrorist attacks in the Northwest Province constitutes one of the greatest travesties of justice in mankind’s legal history. The detainees who were arrested under controversial circumstances, some on their farms and others in their homes or places of business, were subjected to unimaginable indignities as they later revealed before being incarcerated in the dreaded Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé. They first appeared in court in April 1999, two years after their arrest but hearings effectively began on 25 June at the Yaoundé Military Tribunal. As recounted by The Post, the court session kicked off with an embarrassing announcement: that Patrick Yimbu, one of the detainees had died that morning. Consternation and wailing seized the court room but the presiding judge, Engoula Manga, went ahead as if it was the death of a dog or some other animal and not that of a human being that had been announced. What was even more shocking was the discovery by the detainees and lawyers that the charges against the suspects had been changed. .Initially, they were charged with attempted secession. Instead, the judge announced arson, murder, theft and the illegal possession of firearms. The case of Philip Tete was glaring. When he first appeared in court in April he was accused of presiding over an SCNC meeting. This time he was simply accused of threatening life. The defence lawyers, Joseph Mbah Ndam, Charles Taku, Francis Sama and Pius Nfor Njobarah, ran amok when the judge announced that all the arguments and objections from the defence should fall within the context of the charges and nothing else. But the defence argued that the evidence before them was for the charges of secession, including two items of correspondences from S.T. Muna and John Ngu Foncha, Southern Cameroons elderly statesmen, both of them now dead. Following the dropping of the secession charges, they did not know how to proceed with the case. The judge was unmoved by the argument. ‘I don’t want to hear about Anglophones or anything political in this matter,’ he warned. T 96 Etienne Abondo Ze Vina, commissioner to the government, corroborated with the presiding judge by accusing the defence of trying to impose the charge of secession on the court in order to benefit from delaying tactics. The defence then complained that they had not been served with a copy of the charges. The matter was adjourned until 13 July 1999. Present in court that day was Albert Womah Mukong, a renowned human rights activist and crusader for Anglophone freedom, who is now dead. Also present was Fon Samuel Ngum, a pastor by training who later became a traditional ruler and then a lackey of the Biya regime and a persecutor of his people. He was in court to act as a prosecution witness. The 57 detainees present were as thin as rakes and Ebenezer Akwanga could only walk using a walking stick. Even worse was Pa Zachariah Khan, a 65-year-old man whose toes had all been cut off during torture. But a crucial phase of the court was that which held on 27 July. During that session, there were eleven human rights lawyers to defend the detainees. The counsel was unanimous that gendarmes who had investigated the matter had done a very shoddy job and what they had as evidence were concocted bits of information put together with the intention of ensuring the unfair nailing of the detainees. As the presiding judge read out what he claimed were confessions from the detainees, they all shouted out in protest. But the judge and the military state prosecutor, Etienne Abondo, maintained that the report of the gendarmes was objective and accurate. Pius Njobarah, one of the defence lawyers, could not hide his disgust at what he saw as blatant lies. ‘Mr President,’ he bellowed, addressing the presiding judge, ‘if you take what the gendarmes wrote during preliminary investigations as conclusive evidence, then just go ahead and condemn these people without pretending to judge them.’ The lawyer went ahead and accused the court of trying to legalize the murder of innocent people, meaning the detainees, adding that such an act pointed to the fact that the whole judicial system was under trial at the military tribunal. A Francophone defence lawyer present declared that the detainees were innocent until more evidence was presented to adorn the claims of the gendarmes...