Tribunal 53 suspected of leaking information to Amnesty, 4 members interrogated

Tribunal 53, a civil society organisation that was purposefully created to check crimes and human right abuses committed by the Biya’s regime and also to act as voice for thousands of Cameroonians who suffer because of injustice is being accused of leaking information about the dead of some 25 Boko Haram suspects in detention, to London based Amnesty International.

Four members of the organisation were on March 14 grilled by elements of the Douala Gendarmerie Legion. They are suspected of being the source of information to Amnesty International especially the activities of soldiers in the ongoing war against Boko Haram.

Amnesty had in its 2014/2015 report on the situation of human rights in 160 countries across the world published recently, indicted the Rapid Intervention Unit BIR, for wrongful killing of individuals suspected of having links with Boko Haram in the Far North region.

“We spent time with some members of Amnesty International who were in Cameroon and lodged in the same hotel where we were. When we came out of the hotel, some men in civilian attire approached us and presented themselves as gendarmes. They asked us to accompany them to their station which we did. We were later grilled separately for more than three hours” said Elvadas Kegne a member of Tribunal 53 who was interrogated.

He said though they were interrogated separately, they came to understand that what the gendarmes wanted from them was to know which of their colleagues have been to Northern Cameroon within the past month and what have been their activities there.

Three of the four interrogated at the Gendarmerie Legion were later released except for Gerard Kuissi Mephou, journalist and civil society activist who was remanded in custody. His interrogation as we learnt also centered on the concocted picture of the head of state that recently appeared on the website of the presidency showing Paul Biya paying tribute to fallen soldiers in a ceremony he was never there.

Kuissi was in the early hours of March 16 transferred to the National Secretariat for Defense, SED in Yaoundé At press time his release has not been confirmed.

The Cameroon Journal learnt that three lawyers all from Douala are due to defend Kuissi in front in court. A number of organisations including the Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Central Africa,REDHAC, Cameroon O’Bosso, Amnesty International and the People’s Action Party are mobilising support for the release of Kuissi Mephou.

Amnesty International is reported to have already written to the National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms on the case. It is the second time members of Tribunal 53 are being interrogated by gendarmes in Douala after a similar situation in November 2014 when the organisation had to award prizes to the Bibi Ngota journalism excellence award instituted in 2012 to remember the journalist who died in prison.