Operation Sparrow Hawk: Atangana Mebara to regain his freedom

The Cameroon Supreme Court has requested that judgment passed against Jean Marie Atangana Mebara, former Secretary General at the Presidency, on October 12, 2012 be annulled. Should that happen, Mebara may regain freedom from prison in the days ahead.

The Supreme Court decision was made in Yaoundé, Tuesday Nov. 25 after a hearing on the matter. The former Secretary General at the Presidency who was initially acquitted on the 3rd of May 2012 by a Yaoundé High Court but later sentenced on October 8 same year by the Yaoundé Appeal Court had not given up on proving his innocence.

His defence lawyer told the Journal that the Supreme Court through its rapporteur had requested that the judgment passed against his client be annulled. It is from same Court that Mebara was sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzling public funds originally meant for the purchase of a presidential plane.

The Supreme Court said that it wasn’t within the competence of the Yaoundé Court of Appeal to have heard the case in the first place. That the Appeal Court sentenced Mebara at the time when all embezzlement cases were being transferred to the Special Criminal Court.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the rapporteur of the Supreme Court said that the judgement needs to be rolled back to the judgment of 3rd May 2012 by Gilbert Schilck, the President of the Yaoundé High Court who found Mebara not guilty.

The former Secretary General at the Presidency was arrested in 2008 and detained at the Kondengui Central Prison. Jerome Mendouga, former Cameroon Ambassador to the USA who was also implicated in the affair died last November 15 in Yaoundé. It was in the same affair that Otele Essomba was acquitted in October 2012.