Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that many Cameroonian intelligence officers have been arrested in connection with journalist Martinez Zogo’s murder, and that a suspect who has confessed to participating in the murder has even said that it was Cameroon’s justice minister who ordered it.

More than 20 members of Cameroon’s General Directorate for External Investigations (DGRE) have been arrested in the capital in the past few days in connection with the murder of Martinez Zogo, whose mutilated body was found on 22 January. The shocking statements they have made to investigators have coincided with a political battle to succeed President Paul Biya, who will be 90 in a few days, and even attempts to destabilise the government.

Yesterday evening, DGRE boss Léopold Maxime Eko Eko, who is among those who have been arrested, was still denying that he was aware of the plan to silence Zogo, who was Radio Amplitude FM’s presenter.

But his deputy, special operations director Justin Danwe, has provided a shocking statement. In confessions that he hand-wrote during his interrogation, and which RSF has seen, he provides a detailed account of the gruesome operation to silence Zogo and he emerges as the head of the unit that carried it out. Lt. Col. Danwe recognises his involvement and says he told his superior. His account shows that Zogo’s murder was a state crime.

He provides a detailed description of how Zogo was followed for a week, in order to establish the pattern of his movements, until his abduction on the evening of 17 January by DRGE members including Danwe, who was the one in charge. Zogo was reportedly taken to a building under construction that belongs to Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, a powerful businessman who Zogo had accused of embezzlement.

According to Danwe’s confession, Belinga himself then beat Zogo in the basement of his building and telephoned justice minister Laurent Esso, to whom he is close, to ask him what Zogo’s fate should be. Esso, who is one of the most powerful members of the government, allegedly responded that Belinga should “finish the job” to avoid a repetition of the case of Paul Chouta, a journalist who was beaten last year by a mysterious group of assailants who were never unidentified. They left Chouta for dead at the roadside but he ended up surviving.

According to Danwe’s statement, Belinga was not present when “the job was finished,” a task that Danwe acknowledges having carried out himself together with his men. According to the information that RSF has obtained from a medical source, Zogo’s body was badly mutilated. Fingers were cut off, his arms and legs were broken in several places, and a steel rod was rammed into his anus.

The investigation, which is being led by a mixed commission of gendarmes and police officers and is being carried out on President Biya’s orders, has clearly made extraordinary progress in the past few days. How much further will it go? RSF has been told that other important persons, including several other ministers close to Belinga, could have been informed in advance of the plan to kill Zogo and could even have been involved.

The outcome of the investigations remains very uncertain as the affair’s ramifications reach up to the highest level of the state while the political environment is described by several local sources as verging on insurrectionary.

For a while last night, it was being reported that Belinga had been arrested, but he finally made an appearance at one of his companies this morning, displaying an extraordinary degree of calm given the accusations being made against him.

RSF has tried several times to reach the justice minister, without success.

Cameroon is ranked 118th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index.

Culled from RSF

Many people thought that it would be a tough job to find the killers of Martinez Zogo, but it is turning out that the criminals are already talking including Amougou Belinga.

The Vision 4 CEO is already staring down the barrel of defeat. He was picked up yesterday at 10pm in his palatial residence in the presence of his wives.

The very first people – Danwe and Eko Eko – who had been picked up and taken to SED had already spilled the beans and the blame is squarely on Amougou Belinga who commandeered the killing.

After picking up Martinez Zogo, he was taken to Amougou Belinga’s skyscraper where he met face to face with Amougou Belinga who unleashed his anger on the defenseless journalist.

Mr. Belinga delivered two violent kicks to the journalist’s mouth, destroying his teeth.

The plan was not to kill the journalist, but to teach him a bitter lesson. But when Martinez Zogo refused to apologize for all the allegations he had made against Amougou Belinga and Louis Paul Motaze, the decision was altered.

Amougou Belinga had made a wrong decision. He crossed the reddest of the red lines.  He allowed his money and power to get into his head. He called Laurent Esso to update him on the situation and Mr. Esso’s opinion sealed Martinez Zogo’s fate.

Mr. Esso reminded Mr. Belinga that failure to end Paul Tchouta’s life caused him a lot of stress as Mr. Tchouta’s case is causing Mr. Esso his sleep. He has been scared that he could be arrested if identified but it is Mr. Zogo’s case that is really keeping Laurent Esso awake all night.

Amougou Belinga is talking, indeed, he is singing like a magpie and he has already implicated the justice minister and Atanga Nji.

Sources at SED are updating Cameroon Concord News Group and they say this case could take many people to jail as it has opened a huge can of worms.

Atanga Nji, the country’s territorial administration minister, is in the know of what happened and SED investigators who have already decoded Amougou Belinga are already seeking ways to bring in three ministers – Louis Paul Motaze, Paul Atanga Nji and Laurent Esso  – all of whom have invested with Mr. Amougou Belinga.

A source at SED is quoted as saying that Amougou Belinga was simply running a crime syndicate which included many government officials and that was why Amougou Belinga felt he was above the law.

Another source who is a BIR official has told the Cameroon Concord News Group that the country has been transformed into a massive mafia and it will take decades to clean up the mess.

He decried the situation, stressing that if Cameroon had to come out of the moral decadence that has been created by Mr. Biya and his men, a new leadership would have to emerge as the country’s current leadership lacks the moral authority to steer the country out of the mess.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Taking stock of the investigation opened to shed light on the assassination of the famous presenter of the program “Embouteillages” on Amplitude FM in Yaoundé, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, the Minister of State and Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic has issued a press release making public the position of the 89-year President Biya.

Ngoh Ngoh revealed that some suspects of the murder of Martinez Zogo have been arrested “The hearings underway and the legal proceedings that will follow, will allow circumscribing the degree of involvement of some and others and establishing the identity of all persons involved in one way or another in the murder of Martinez Zogo” Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh noted.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that Amougou Belinga is one of the 22 suspects arrested by elements of the General Directorate for External Research.

“In this tragic circumstance, the Head of State wishes to pay tribute to the late journalist Martinez Zogo and reiterate his support to the entire profession,” said Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

Minister Ngoh Ngoh added that the “Head of State reiterates to the family of the deceased his most saddened condolences and assures them of the compassion of the entire nation.”

Here is the Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh communiqué

Prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court in Yaoundé have seized 53 buildings, 39 vehicles and disabled 11 bank accounts, mostly comprised of more than 23.9 billion FCFA from former minister of defense Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo’o.

The Special Criminal Court filings detailed that the Biya regime also seized a series of bank accounts belonging to his wife Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o holding millions in cash.

Most of the funds came from offenses including embezzlement of public funds, specifically the over-invoicing of public contracts, money laundering and bribery.

Furthermore, our Yaoundé city correspondent Rita Akana detail that nearly six hundred million held in four bank accounts in Douala was seized as well. Mebe Ngo’o maintains his innocence and has denied misappropriating Cameroonian tax payer’s money.

Additionally, Biya regime agents also seized heavy machinery that belonged to the Mebe Ngo’o family that was held in several locations in Yaoundé.  The Biya Beti Ewondo government revealed intentions to seize the property, and the prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court initiated the process.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Amougou Belinga was arrested yesterday in Yaoundé and will be charged with murder over the death of journalist Martinez Zogo, whose body was found in a field outskirts of Yaoundé.

Yaoundé police said the late journalist was found with multiple injuries caused by several sharp-edged type weapons.  

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that Amougou Belinga was detained by secret service agents and is currently under guard at the Secretariat of State for Defense (SED).

Our chief intelligence reporter in the nation’s capital hinted that the so-called media guru will be charged with murder.

It is understood he was arrested late in the evening and is now remanded in custody. He will face state prosecutors today.

Tributes flow after tragic death

Police were called to the field some few kilometers from Yaoundé after some passersby discovered the body of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Zogo was pronounced dead by emergency services shortly after, with colleagues, family and friends saying they believed he had been killed following statements he made against prominent government officials including business and media tycoon Amougou Belinga.

The alleged homicide of Martinez Zogo in Yaoundé has sent shockwaves through the entire nation and the media community, with friends remembering the radio host as someone who never stopped smiling.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Rita Akana  

The Special Criminal Court sentenced former minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o to thirty years in jail for engaging in massive fraud during his time at the head of the defense ministry.

The Francophone Beti Ewondo political figure was charged with organizing, directing and engaging in criminal activity. The Special Criminal Court jury dominated by judges from his Beti tribal extraction announced that the list of offenses included embezzlement of public funds, specifically the over-invoicing of public contracts to the tune of 23 billion CFA francs, money laundering, bribery and taking an interest in an anti Biya act.

The Mebe Ngo’o imprisonment did not trigger any mixed political feeling and thoughts in Yaoundé the nation’s capital. A co-accused, Bernadette Mebe Ngo’o who continues to moonlight as the wife of the former Minister of Defense was also sentenced to ten years in prison for complicity in the embezzlement of 5 billion CFA francs and money laundering.

Lieutenant-Colonel Elie Ghislain Mboutou and Maxime Léonard Mbangue each received 25 years in prison. They were also found guilty of embezzlement of public funds, money laundering and corruption.

By some strange happenstance, one of the defendants, Victor Emmanuel Menye, received nine years in prison. Initially, prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court had requested life imprisonment.

The so-called Biya’s next-of-kin was found not guilty concerning suspicion of embezzlement in the purchase of helicopters and patrol boats in China.

Mebe Ngo’o’s lawyers say he remains a political prisoner.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

Cameroon military officials say they have killed General Transporter, a key Ambazonia commander of the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces, in a special military operation on the Kumba-Mamfe highway.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that the renowned Amba fighter was killed during a gunfight after the Francophone dominated army descended on the Kumba-Mamfe road some few kilometers from Kumba, the chief city in Meme Division.

Around 4 of General Transporter’s associates at the scene were killed, but there were no Cameroon military casualties, the Yaoundé officials said.

General Transporter was responsible for fostering the growing presence of the Ambazonia Interim Government in Meme Division and for leading anti French Cameroun operations in the entire Meme.

Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in Yaoundé revealed that General Transporter had been on the Biya regime intelligence radar for over three years.

By Kingsley Betek in Kumba

Human Rights Watch on Friday called on Cameroon to launch an independent inquiry into the killing of a popular radio journalist who had spoken out against graft.

Martinez Zogo, 50, who regularly attacked financial sleaze and cronyism in the central African nation, was abducted on January 17 outside a police station in the suburbs of the capital Yaounde.

His heavily-mutilated corpse was found on Sunday, the authorities say.

Zogo “was a journalist who took great risks to expose the truth about corruption,” Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at HRW, said in a statement.

“His heinous killing sends a chilling message to all other journalists in Cameroon,” he said, urging “a prompt and impartial investigation so that Zogo’s killers can be brought to justice”.

Cameroon has been ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Biya for 40 years and ranks poorly among international indices on graft and press freedom.

Zogo was manager of the privately-owned radio station Amplitude FM and host of a daily show in which, just days before he was killed, he had told listeners about threats he faced.

“He went to the police station, he shouted, but no one did anything,’ said Chantal Roger Tuile, editor of La Tribune de l’Est newspaper.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Monday said the killing was “a serious blow for democracy and freedom of the press” in Cameroon.

 RSF’s Press Freedom Index ranks Cameroon a lowly 118th out of 180 countries.

Source: Channelstv

The body of one of the most prominent journalists in Cameroon was found near the capital of Yaoundé with signs of torture in what appears to be a brutal murder linked to his work.

Martinez Zogo’s body was on Sunday found allegedly badly mutilated and his clothes were scattered in the radius of around 100 meters, said Reporters Without Borders.

Zogo, who hosted one of the most popular radio shows in the country, was abducted at the beginning of last week not long after he talked on air about suspicious leaks of tens of millions of dollars from the Cameroonian Treasury.

He claimed to have evidence showing that Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga, a media mogul known to have close ties with several government ministers, was the main beneficiary of the scheme.

This is not the first time Belinga’s name figures in connection with attacks on journalists.

In March last year, a local reporter Paul Chouta was nearly beaten to death by unknown assailants after he criticized Belinga on social media.

According to R. Maxwell Bone, an expert on Cameroon’s political economy, attacks on Chouta and Zogo were intended as a message from kleptocratic networks abusing the Cameroonian state that no criticism of their activities will be tolerated.

“The killing of Zogo highlights a very concerning trend of how far these networks are willing to go to protect their interests and how risky it is to be a journalist in Cameroon,” he told OCCRP on Wednesday.

Cameroon, which has since 1982 been run by strongman Paul Biya who will be celebrating his 90th birthday in February, is one of the most authoritarian countries in Africa.

On Sunday evening, the government announced an inquiry into Zogo’s death.

However, Bone was skeptical that they would ever try to identify who ordered the gruesome murder.

“At most, they will find a random individual who may have been contracted to do the killing. I would be extremely surprised if they went after Belinga and others,” he concluded.

Source: OCCRP.org