Cameroon’s judiciary has slammed another jail sentence on already jailed former Secretary General at the Presidency, Jean Marie Atangana Mebara on embezzlement charges. This is in outright defiance of an earlier statement from the African Union which had demanded Mebara’s unconditional and immediate release on arguments that he is a political prisoner.
The erstwhile government cabinet minister was handed a 25-year jail term by the Special Criminal Court in Yaounde, June 22, for embezzling circa 2.9billion FCFA; part of money set aside for the purchase of a presidential plane code named Albatross.
He had been sentence for 15 and 20years separate imprisonment terms. Legal practitioners say if the former statesman’s lawyers are not smart enough to plead that he serves his three sentences as concurrently, he will have to serve them consecutively. This they say, means he would have sentences, one after the other, possibly amounting to 50years in the dungeons.
Going by judicial texts, Mebera would have to serve only the longest sentence (25years) if the judges grant an appeal from his lawyers for his jail terms to be considered concurrent.
The third sentence comes at a time when keen watchers of the polity are anxious to see how President Biya would react to pressure coming from the AU’s Commission on Human and People’s Rights.
Although at the moment, government is yet to officially respond to the commission’s pressure, we gathered that as signatory to it, Cameroon is obliged to do so within a period of 180 days.
In a voluminous document released last month, the commission described Atangana Mebara as a political prisoner. It said the legal process that led to Mebara’s conviction and incarceration was fraught with irregularities and pressure from high quarters, which to them is a contravention of provisions of the African charter on human rights and freedoms to which Cameroon is a signatory.
In the document, the commission is also requesting government to pay the sum of 400 million FCFA as damages for what they described as arbitrary detention.
It is important to note that Mebara had filed a complaint about his case to the commission, which has the jurisdiction of a quasi-court, in July 2012 but it was only considered admissible in 2014.
Mebara had, in his petition, complained of the unnecessarily prolonged nature of his trial, why he was detained afresh in 2012 after he had earlier been acquitted, as well as some other irregularities related to the presiding judge.
Mebara’s first jail sentence was slammed on him in October 2012 for a matter related to the purchase of a faulty presidential jet. The second came a year later (in October 2013) in another matter concerning the defunct Cameroon Airlines Corporation, CAMAIR.
An appeal against the first imprisonment verdict filed by Mebara’s lawyers was last week rejected by the Supreme Court in Yaounde.
The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights which was inaugurated in November 1987 has three main objectives, namely; the protection of human and peoples’ rights, the promotion of human and peoples’ rights and the interpretation of the African charter on human and peoples’ rights.
