Judicial epilogue, or almost, in a case which dates back to December 2017 in Cameroon. At the time, nearly 75 people were arrested in Yaoundé, Douala, Ebolowa and Kye-Ossi, in the south. One party had been released, another – less than thirty, mostly Chadian nationals – had been prosecuted by military justice, accused of attempted assassination against the president of neighboring Equatorial Guinea. After four years of proceedings, in March 2022, sentences of 30 and 35 years in prison were handed down. Convictions contested by lawyers for around twenty defendants. And finally, this year, on appeal, in February, they were acquitted. But they are still detained.
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On February 15, 2024, when the Center Court of Appeal rendered its decision, it partially overturned the judgment rendered in 2022 by the Yaoundé military court. Thus, it declares all the accused not guilty of conspiracy to murder, hostility against the homeland, introduction and transport of weapons. She acquits them, therefore.
On the other hand, she declared twelve of them guilty of “illegal immigration”. For this, she sentences them to a fine of 2 million FCFA and two years in prison. But all of them have already spent six years – triple their sentence – behind bars.
Their lawyer, Me Emmanuel Simh, denounces the fact that this detention continues for more than two months after the decision of the Court of Appeal: “ I made administrative procedures with the government commissioner and with the director of military justice, who told me to await instructions from his superiors. I do not understand why we are waiting for any order from a superior to simply execute a decision rendered regularly by a Cameroonian court established by the State of Cameroon. »
The lawyer also says he contacted the Chadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the embassy of Chad in Cameroon. The twelve Chadian detainees convicted of illegal immigration have written to the prosecution to request the transmission of the results of the hearing to the central prison of Yaoundé so that they can be released.
Read alsoCameroon: 25 people convicted of attempted assassination of the president of Equatorial Guinea in 2017