Several people have been arrested in Cameroon, "strongly suspected" of being involved in the murder of a journalist kidnapped and then "murdered" after he was 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 featured host of a daily show, "Embouteillage", in which he regularly denounced racketeering and corruption in the 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, known as "Martinez", 50, was found dead five days later. "His body has obviously suffered significant abuse," the government said.
"Establish the identity of everyone involved"
Mr. Biya ordered "a mixed gendarmerie police investigation" into the "assassination" of Martinez Zogo and "the investigations (...) have, to date, led to the arrest of several people whose involvement in this heinous crime is strongly suspected. Others remain wanted, "said Minister of State and Secretary General to the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, in a statement on Thursday.
"The current hearings and the legal proceedings that 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 Le Monde, about twenty Cameroonian personalities, in particular the writer Calixthe Beyala, or the intellectual Achille Mbembe, express 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 "long tradition of trivialization of impunity and acceptance of the atrocity aimed at frightening and diverting citizens from their duty to watch over the quality of the management of public affairs".
