The body of the Director General of Private Radio Amplitude FM was found mutilated five days after his kidnapping.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Several people were arrested in Cameroon, “strongly suspected” of being involved in the murder of a journalist kidnapped and “murdered” after being manifestly tortured in mid-January, announced the presidency on Thursday 2 February. p>
Martinez Zogo was the Director General of Private Radio Amplitude FM and star host of a daily program, “Bouting”, in which he regularly denounced business and corruption in this country of Central Africa directed by a Iron hand for over forty years by the same man, President Paul Biya, and his Almighty Party.
removed on January 17 by strangers in the suburbs of the capital Yaoundé in front of a gendarmerie post, Arsène Salomon Mbani Zogo, known as “Martinez”, 50, had been found dead five days later. “His body obviously suffered important abuse,” said the government.
“Establish the identity of all those involved”
m. Biya has ordered “a mixed police investigation” police “on the” assassination “of Martinez Zogo and” investigations (…) have, to date, have enabled the arrest of several people whose involvement in this odious crime is highly suspected . Others remain sought, “the Minister of State and Secretary General for the Presidency of the Republic said in a statement on Thursday, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.
“The current hearings and the legal proceedings that will follow 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 deliver any additional detail.
The murder of Martinez Zogo had aroused strong emotion in Cameroon but also abroad. In a column published Thursday by the French newspaper MO12345LEMONDE, around twenty Cameroonian personalities, in particular the writer Calixthe Beyala, or the intellectual Achille Mbembe, expresses their “lively concern in the face of the violent turn of the public debate”. p>
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 atrocity aimed at scareing and diverting citizens from their duty to watch over the quality of public affairs management “.