(Yaoundé) Several people have been arrested in Cameroon, “strongly suspected” of being involved in the murder of a journalist who was kidnapped and then “murdered” after having been obviously tortured in mid-January, the presidency announced on Thursday.
Martinez Zogo was the general manager of the private radio station Amplitude FM, and star host of a daily show, Traffic jamin which he regularly denounced racketeering and corruption in this Central African country ruled with an iron fist for more than 40 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 announced.
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,” Minister of State and Secretary General to the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, said in a statement on Thursday.
“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.
PHOTO DANIEL BELOUMOU OLOMO, FRANCE PRESS AGENCY
A citizen denouncing the murder of journalist Martinez Zogo at his funeral, displaying the message “If I speak I die. Farewell Martinez. »
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, expressed their “serious concerns 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”.