When judges are the criminals

The Justice and Peace Committee of People’s Action Party is investigation a very serious allegation about the criminal conduct of the Buea State Counsel’s Chambers.

We have not verified the accuracy of the story; but because of the gravity of a probable sadistic infliction of debilitating pains on an innocent Cameroonian by the very persons who have taken oath to do justice to all manner of people, we have decided to publish the story as it is told.

Besides, insistence on the veracity of the story by an eye-witness does compel us to raise the alarm forthwith!

The story goes that some resident of Great Soppo, Buea, kept a dog. The dog fought with a neighbour’s dog and the latter dog died. Many Cameroonians being hopelessly ignorant and of average intelligence, the keeper of the dead dog lodged a criminal complaint against the keeper of the surviving dog with the State Counsel’s Chambers in Buea…

When the “suspect” reported to the State Counsel’s Chambers, he was not even allowed to talk. He was immediately remanded in prison custody where he has been awaiting trial for eight (8) months now. Our informer was categorical that he shared the same “ward” in prison with the victim in question. His declaration was corroborated by another inmate of the prison. And a lawyer who recently visited the prison was in no doubt that similar cases could be legion in that prison.

We were unable to find an answer as to whether anyone properly trained in the law could be so daft as to boldly adumbrate and apply such obnoxious new principle of law as vicarious liability in criminal law.

Nor could we stop wondering if the relevant officer of the court voyaged into customary law where tenets are rife that persons do get transformed into animals; and that that was what probably led to the conclusion that the “suspect” was in the dog: a dog-man? … Unbelievable!

We are seriously investigating the matter; and the details will be yours the soonest possible. But reading this story already into the recent report that close to 63% of inmates in Camerounese prisons are awaiting trial, few would seriously be in doubt about the veracity of the story. Is not it a notorious fact that some Camerounese judges are prone to overzealous sadistic excesses?

Be the situation as it may, our own thinking is that the real question is what the judicial council is doing about such homicidal callousness of judges who persistently trample human rights underfoot in a country that has ratified the Geneva Convention on civil and political rights!