A little less than a week before the next hearing into the assassination of host Martinez Zogo, the different parties to the trial – the lawyers for the seventeen accused, the public prosecutor and the court – are having difficulty agreeing on the modalities of conducting the trial. Meeting last Monday, April 29 to resolve their differences, they separated without any agreement, leaving the risk of a blocking of the trial at the next hearing expected on May 6.
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With our correspondent in Yaoundé, Polycarp Essomba
The main point of contention which had already been the subject of a decision during the last hearing at the Cameroon, on April 15, consisted of the lawyers’ repeated request to obtain a copy of the procedural file. The twenty lawyers present maintained this requirement, in place of the court’s decision inviting them to consult the file on site. The councils argued that this request is part of the imperative of a “ fair, adversarial trial and respect for the rights of the defense “.
The court, supported by the developments of the government commissioner, the equivalent in military justice of the public prosecutor, once again responded firmly in the negative. The only option, maintained the president of the court, is consultation of the file on site, without the possibility of filming or copying all or part of the file.
Faced with this intransigence, the lawyers announced their intention to renew this request at the hearing on May 6, and thus force the court to render a decision on this one-off question which could pave the way for an appeal to the Court of Appeal. . The consequence of such an approach would lead to the suspension of the procedure but also would delay the opening of the debates on the merits and the end of the trial. “We are ready to take this risk,” declared Me Charles Tchoungang, who leads the defense collective of businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga and journalist Bruno Bidjang, aware that this approach could lead to the extension of the detention of their clients.
No consensus could thus be found at the end of this meeting, no timetable established for the purposes of consulting the file while certain parties still intend to raise exceptions to request the nullity of the procedure before even attacking the merits of the file .
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