GUNSHOTS RING OUT as the troops advance down a dirt road. One of them, in full combat gear — helmet, camouflage uniform, automatic weapon — clowns for the camera and sticks out his tongue. A sergeant next to him says, in French, “This is a kamikaze mission!”

It quickly becomes clear exactly what type of mission this actually is. It’s of the same type that soldiers carried out at El Mozote, El Salvador, in 1981, at My Lai, South Vietnam, in 1968, and at Oradour-sur-Glane, France, in 1944. It is a massacre. And it is filmed. This particular mass killing takes place in Cameroon, a key U.S. ally and staging ground for America’s drone operations in Africa. While the number of victims is likely smaller than other notorious mass killings, it’s the second atrocity video involving Cameroon’s armed forces to be made public this summer.

“Lay down, lay down. Put your head there,” a soldier shouts at about 12 unresisting people who are seated or lying on the ground. Around the one minute and 44-second mark in the footage, troops aim at the group and fire with their assault rifles for an extended period of time.

“There are some who are not dead,” says one of the soldiers when the shooting subsides. “The dudes still move. They move,” says another.

A soldier then walks forward and fires at close range. Bodies jerk from the impact of the bullets. A voice then calls out, “It’s not us. It’s Yaounde” — the capital of the country, and an apparent reference to the national government.

“This shocking video shows armed men lining people up face down or sitting against a wall and shooting them with automatic weapons,”said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International’s Lake Chad researcher. “A second round of shooting ensures no survivors. Here is yet more credible evidence to support the allegations that Cameroon’s armed forces have committed grave crimes against civilians, and we are calling for an immediate, thorough, and impartial investigation. Those suspected to be responsible for these abhorrent acts must be brought to justice.”

Other news organizations have released censored versions of the video that do not show the killings. The Intercept is publishing a version that includes the massacre, and has an English translation. With the U.S. government — which has close ties with Cameroon’s armed forces and operates a drone base in the north of the country — offering little indication that it is seriously investigating the atrocity or reconsidering its military aid to the country, it is in the public interest to make the uncensored footage available.

An investigation by Amnesty International, using digital analysis of the video footage that began circulating online, found that the mass killing of at least a dozen unarmed people took place during a Cameroonian military operation in the village of Achigachiya in the Far North region sometime prior to May 2016. An earlier Amnesty International report documented the extrajudicial executions of at least 30 civilians, including many elderly people, in the same village in January 2015. Local sources say as many as 88 people were killed. While much remains uncertain, the Cameroonian military operation in Achigachiya was apparently part of a mission to recover the bodies of fellow soldiers killed when Boko Haram militants overran a nearby Cameroonian military basein late December 2014.  The attack on civilians was likely an act of retribution for perceived local assistance to the insurgents. The video appears to be footage of that 2015 operation.

An Islamist insurgent group with roots in Nigeria, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of violence that spilled across the borders of several Lake Chad Basin countries, including Cameroon. Known for attacks on schools, the burning of villages, and large-scale abductions — including nearly 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014 — Boko Haram’s brutality has led to ruthless responses from local militaries against suspected supporters, and even civilian victims, of the group.

In July, Amnesty issued a report about another video that showed the point-blank execution of two women and two children by Cameroonian forces who accused them of supporting Boko Haram. (The Intercept was the first news outlet to publish that footage in full.) Those killings similarly took place in the Far North region, where Cameroon has for years conducted operations aimed at the militants, though the fighting there has recently diminished. For more than a year and a half, Cameroonian troops have also been conducting a brutal counterinsurgency campaign — killing unarmed protesters, destroying villages, burning homes — in the bilingual country’s minority Anglophone regions.

“The Department of Defense is gravely concerned about the recent video appearing to depict Cameroonian security forces conducting extrajudicial killings of civilians,” Maj. Sheryll Klinkel, a Pentagon spokesperson, told The Intercept. “This is the second video in a month depicting a similar incident. The Department of Defense takes these incidents seriously.”

According to Allegrozzi of Amnesty, “Crimes caught on camera are just the tip of the iceberg; they are part of a system where abuses are routine, where they are the rule not the exception. This culture of impunity seems to reflect the belief that annihilating suspected insurgents — whether Boko Haram or armed separatists — and terrorizing civilian populations is the way to re-establish security in various parts of the country. This strategy is not only unlawful, it’s also failing, as evidenced by the continually degrading security environment in the country, from the Far North to the North and Southwest.”

THE EMERGENCE OF the two atrocity videos comes roughly one year after Amnesty, the London-based research firm Forensic Architecture, and The Intercept exposed illegal imprisonment, torture, and killings by Cameroonian troops at a remote military base that is also used by U.S. personnel and private contractors for training missions and drone surveillance. As the U.S. military fortified the Cameroonian site in the Far North, known as Salak, and supported the elite local troops based there, Amnesty found that suspects held at the outpost were subjected to water torture, beaten with electric cables and boards, or tied and suspended with ropes, among other abuses.

After the Salak revelations, U.S. Africa Command launched an investigation but never publicly announced details about its aims and has not released the completed report. As The Intercept has previously reported, a State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that AFRICOM’s investigation “did not consider Cameroonian human rights violations but focused on whether DoD personnel had knowledge of abuses by Cameroonian military forces.” It appears, in other words, that the U.S. military was less concerned with what the Cameroonians were doing, than whether any Americans knew about it.

For nearly one year, AFRICOM has ignored periodic requests from The Intercept seeking comment about the parameters, scope, and findings of its probe, which was headed by Brig. Gen. Timothy McAteer and concluded in November 2017.

“We believe that the AFRICOM investigation should be made public,” said Allegrozzi. “The report must be publicly released, not only to find out if any U.S. military personnel were aware of incommunicado detention and torture, but also to convey to the Cameroonian authorities how seriously the United States takes this issue.”

Between 2015 and 2018, the U.S. authorized roughly $200 million in security aid for Cameroon, including $108 million earmarked for counterterrorism. “Cameroon is one of the top six recipients in sub-Saharan Africa and in the top three for West Africa, so they are one of the key U.S. counterterrorism partners in sub-Saharan Africa,” Colby Goodman, director of the Security Assistance Monitor, which analyzes U.S. foreign military aid, told The Intercept.

Following the 2017 torture revelations, U.S. military assistance to some, if not all, units of Cameroon’s armed forces was reportedly suspended for a time. The State Department official told The Intercept that “the suspension was based on the [U.S. government] analysis of all sources of credible information, including the 2017 Amnesty International report.”

In April, the State Department released its annual human rights report on Cameroon, citing Amnesty’s 2017 findings and detailing a raft of abuses, including “arbitrary and unlawful killings through excessive use of force by security forces … torture and abuse by security forces including in military and unofficial detention facilities; prolonged arbitrary detentions including of suspected Boko Haram supporters and individuals in the Anglophone regions.” Just 10 days later, however, Peter Barlerin, the U.S. ambassador to Cameroon, presided over a ceremony celebrating the transfer of two American-made surveillance aircraft to the Cameroon Air Force.

Nick Sadoski, the acting spokesperson for the State Department’s Africa Bureau, told The Intercept that “we have informed the Cameroonian government that lack of progress and clarity about actions undertaken by the government in response to allegations of human rights violations could result in a broader suspension of U.S. assistance that is directed toward Cameroonian efforts to counter violent extremist organizations, including especially Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa.”

Cameroon’s embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to The Intercept’s request for an interview. In an August 12 statement posted to YouTube, government spokesperson Issa Tchiroma Bakary announced that a “thorough investigation” would be carried out.

Allegrozzi called on the United States to push Cameroonian authorities to investigate human rights violations and carefully vet all Cameroonian military personnel recommended for U.S. training. “More generally, the United States must take effective measures to ensure that any military cooperation with Cameroon, including training or technical advice, does not contribute to the commission of human rights violations and crimes under international law,” she said.

Goodman echoed those sentiments. “The U.S. definitely needs to follow these issues closely to investigate the risks of any of the aid provided being used for the commission of human rights violations — either in connection to Boko Haram or the Anglophone protesters,” he said. “The United States should be more transparent about their concerns because these are important issues.  These are such serious issues that the American public and the Cameroonian public have a right to know what the United States is doing to attempt to prevent this in the future.”

U.S. officials claim that’s being done. “We are engaging with the Department of State to develop a coordinated approach to ensure that the Government of Cameroon credibly investigate these incidents, transparently manage its findings, and hold accountable any individuals found to be responsible,” the Pentagon’s Maj. Klinkel told The Intercept by email.

Nonetheless, AFRICOM, which is the combatant command responsible for Cameroon, remains silent about its long-suppressed report on torture in Cameroon. The Intercept contacted AFRICOM 10 times over the course of roughly one month seeking comment. Email return receipts indicate that two spokespeople read the questions, but the command never responded.

Culled from The Intercept

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday met with Cameroonian President Paul Biya ahead of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

Xi pointed out that since Biya’s visit to China in March, both sides have been actively implementing the consensus reached between the presidents, bringing new achievements in exchanges and cooperations in various areas.

China is ready to maintain high-level communication with Cameroon and see that the two countries continue to support each other on issues of core interests and major concerns, said Xi.

Xi also pledged to strengthen cooperation in infrastructure construction, and contribute to the industrialization and modernization of Cameroon under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and FOCAC.

“China will support Cameroon in enhancing its capacity to maintain peace and stability,” said Xi.

Noting the solid traditional friendship between the two countries, Biya expressed compliments on the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity and the Belt and Road Initiative, both proposed by Xi.

The Cameroonian president also expressed his gratitude for China’s long-term support, and willingness to deepen bilateral cooperation.

The 2018 Beijing summit provides an important opportunity for the common development of African countries and China, said Biya, adding that Cameroon will work with China to promote the China-Africa comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership.

After the meeting, the two presidents witnessed the signing of agreements on bilateral cooperation.

Xinhuanet.com

Troops in the West African nation of Cameroon have tortured prisoners at a remote military base that is also used by U.S. personnel and private contractors for drone surveillance and training missions.

As the U.S. military has fortified the Cameroonian site, known as Salak, and supported the elite local troops based there, the outpost has become the scene of illegal imprisonment, brutal torture, and even killings, according to a new investigation by The Intercept and the Goldsmiths, University of London-based research firm Forensic Architecture, based on extensive research by Amnesty International. Nearly 60 victims held at Salak described to Amnesty International how they were subjected to water torture, beaten with electric cables and boards, or tied and suspended with ropes, among other abuses.

Forensic Architecture investigated conditions of detention and torture at two sites of illegal incarceration, run by Cameroon’s security forces, to accompany a new report by Amnesty International. See the full investigation here.Video: Forensic Architecture

No evidence has emerged that U.S. personnel were involved in torture, but photos and videos from Salak show U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors near the facilities where prisoners were held, and detainees testified to seeing and hearing Americans in uniform during their imprisonment.

“We can’t be 100 percent sure that Americans were aware of the torture,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, Amnesty International’s lead researcher on a new report about abuses by Cameroonian forces. “But our evidence demonstrates that at Salak these practices occur in places that are accessible and can be visible to U.S. and other foreign personnel.”

Salak serves as ground zero for Cameroon’s fight against the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, a campaign that the United States has thrown its full support behind. Last month, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress outlining current “deployments of U.S. Armed Forces equipped for combat.” In addition to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, Trump mentioned Cameroon, where “approximately 300 United States military personnel are also deployed, the bulk of whom are supporting United States airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations in the region.”

Over the last decade, the United States has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to Cameroon (more than $111 million in security assistance since 2015) while training its elite military force and providing everything from arms to humanitarian aid to development assistance.

“We are proud of the Cameroonian Security Forces’ commitment to protecting Cameroonian citizens,” said U.S. Ambassador Michael Hoza in a speech earlier this month. Last spring, Hoza praised the conduct of Cameroon’s elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (known by its French acronym, BIR), which Amnesty specifically accuses of torture. “In their training, conduct, and leadership, the BIR exhibited all of the values we expect in our own armed forces — professionalism, protection of the civilian population, and respect for human rights,” Hoza wrote.

The new report by Amnesty International — which catalogues the cases of 101 individuals subjected to illegal incarceration, torture, or extrajudicial killing by Cameroonian security forces at multiple sites — stands in sharp relief to the ambassador’s comments and raises serious questions about ongoing U.S. support.

“During torture, they asked me in French to confess that I was a member of Boko Haram,” one former detainee told Amnesty. “They beat me with a wooden plank and a chain as they tried to force me to eat pork. I am Muslim and I don’t eat pork so I refused, and I was tortured. They beat me several times with the wooden plank, which had a nail stuck into it. I was beaten everywhere, especially on my legs and ankles. I received so many blows that I passed out.”

U.S. Africa Command did not respond to questions about whether the command was aware of reports of abuses being carried out at Salak. Multiple requests to the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon for an interview with Ambassador Hoza went unanswered, as did requests for interviews with the offices of Cameroon’s president and prime minister as well as the Cameroonian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Between December 2013 and February 2015, two buildings appeared on the western side of Salak, and foundations were laid in the southwest corner for hangars.

“Everyone says they are Americans”

For years, the U.S. military has maintained an outpost in Douala, Cameroon, and a drone base in the remote town of Garoua. Little, however, has been reported about the U.S. facilities known as the “Salak Compound office” or the nearby “Team Maroua House Office.”

The Cameroonian airfield and military base at Salak, in the northern border region wedged between Nigeria and Chad, expanded as Boko Haram’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians increased, leaving tens of thousands across the region injured or dead and millions of others displaced, and following the April 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, which generated international attention.

Satellite imagery shows the significant expansion of the base, including the construction of two buildings between December 2013 and January 2015 later described to Amnesty International by witnesses as “the Americans’ buildings.” By 2015, a U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion appeared to be beefing up fortifications at the camp. Around the same time, the U.S. Defense Department arranged for Insitu, a subsidiary of the defense giant Boeing, to supply Cameroon’s military with six ScanEagle surveillance drones worth $9.3 million, according to contracting documents.

Between February 2015 and February 2017, the northwestern section of the base was expanded to make room for a ScanEagle unmanned aerial system.

Today, Salak serves as the headquarters of Operation Alpha, the BIR’s internationally backed counterterrorism campaign against Boko Haram, and an increasingly integral site for the U.S. military’s operations in West Africa.

“Maroua and nearby Salak air field are important hubs for our security assistance efforts in the region, and we regularly have small numbers of U.S. personnel (military and/or contractor) in the area supporting Cameroon’s aviation, logistics, counter-improvised explosive devices and force protection capabilities,” Capt. Jennifer Dyrcz, a spokesperson for AFRICOM, told The Intercept by email. “U.S. Africa Command does intend to assist Cameroon in refurbishing and improving Salak air field for Cameroonian use.”

Yet Amnesty International found that Salak is also used as an illegal prison to hold people detained by the BIR. The prisoners are mostly men — often military-age, often Muslim, and often members of the Kanuri ethnic minority — but women and children as young as 7 have also been held there.

“We’re not talking about real Boko Haram fighters, but about people arrested on suspicion of supporting Boko Haram, who are just ordinary people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Allegrozzi, of Amnesty International. “[The Cameroonian security forces] often arrest people on the basis of little to no evidence. These civilians are then transferred to illegal detention facilities.”

The human rights group documented pervasive use of stress positions, suspension by ropes, and water torture in addition to sleep deprivation, extraction of fingernails, burning, and electric shocks. Former detainees, their families, lawyers and others also described beatings with chains, batons, machetes, and other objects.

“In Salak, I was permanently chained up. I was only given one meal per day, and I was tortured at least three times. The first two times, men in plain clothes beat me severely all over my body with electric cables,” one former detainee told Amnesty.

Amnesty estimates that dozens of prisoners died as a result of torture and other ill treatment in detention facilities run by the Cameroonian security forces between 2013 and 2017, but the number could be far higher. Former detainees at Salak described a routine process by which corpses of those who died in group cells after being tortured were wrapped in plastic by other detainees and transported off site by BIR troops.

Multiple detainees witnessed white men, sometimes identified specifically as Americans, exercising or working in an open-air “garage” immediately south of the detention cells.

“During my detention in Salak, I saw white men there on several occasions. Most of the time, I saw them from the windows of my cell. I saw them jogging in the early morning, from the back window of my cell. … I also saw them standing or talking from the front window of the cell — the window that faced the garage,” recalled one former prisoner.

Another detainee, held from February to July 2016, told Amnesty:

I saw white men in Salak many times and I heard them talking in English. I think they were Americans. Everyone said they were Americans and we knew American soldiers stocked material in Salak. I saw them running from the back window of my cell, especially in the morning, as well as standing in front of our cell, just where the garage was. Some were wearing plain clothes, others were in uniform. The uniform was like camouflage clothing, green and beige.

Further evidence of a persistent American presence on the base comes from public social media postings by a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, now employed by Boeing subsidiary Insitu, who began working at the base this spring. Forensic Architecture discovered photographs geotagged at Salak and shared on social media by the American veteran, who did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. The images offer an unprecedented window into activities at the base and line up with previously reported details about U.S. operations in Cameroon.

For instance, photos uploaded in April show a “skyhook,” which is used to land ScanEagle drones by plucking them out of the sky, as well as signal relay equipment located near a shipping container that the veteran referred to in a photo caption as “The Office.”

Top: BIR soldiers in discussion with unidentified foreign personnel. The device in the background is the “skyhook” for a ScanEagle drone. Bottom: On top of containers referred to as “The Office,” there appears to be a communications array probably linked to the ScanEagle unmanned aerial system.

In photographs posted to the veteran’s Facebook account in May, white men can be seen donning night vision goggles alongside members of the Centre Anti-Terroriste, a training program associated with BIR. (Publicly available contract information shows that in 2015 and 2016, the U.S. military purchased night vision goggles for Cameroonian forces.)

A video posted that same day by the veteran shows U.S. and Cameroonian forces playing a game of night vision soccer on a tree-lined square at the south side of the Salak base. At least one person can be heard speaking English with an American accent.

It’s impossible to know if all the white men on the base were Americans and which Americans were active duty military personnel. “What I can say is a small number of contractors and U.S. forces rotate in and out interminably based on mission,” AFRICOM’s Jennifer Dyrcz replied when asked if U.S. personnel were living on the Salak base.

Ilaria Allegrozzi of Amnesty International says there is no question that Americans serve there. “This was not challenged by the U.S.,” she says, referring to conversations with Ambassador Hoza and other U.S. officials regarding the U.S. troop presence at Salak. “Our evidence show that American personnel is present at Salak. They’re there.”

Spatial analysis by Forensic Architecture, utilizing satellite imagery, open-source material, and 3D modeling to geolocate the Air Force veteran’s photos, confirms the precise areas visited by Americans. Combined with interview material obtained by Amnesty International, the group’s work indicates Americans — and possibly French military personnel and Israeli contractors — have apparently unrestricted access to Camp Salak, and have regularly been present at, or very near, sites where detainees have been incarcerated or tortured.

Such abuses should come as no surprise to the U.S. government. The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor has long chronicled human rights violations in line with Amnesty International’s findings. In 2007, the State Department’s annual human rights report noted that “more than 100 persons were reportedly beaten after members of the Rapid Intervention Brigade arrested them in and around Maroua, in the Far North Province. The victims were detained for several days at Salack [sic], where many of them were stripped naked, blindfolded and beaten, then held in a cell with water on its floor.” In every State Department human rights report since 2010, BIR troops have been cited for assaults, killings, and other outrages against noncombatants. Last year’s report specifically cited previous investigations by Amnesty International into torture and deaths at Salak.

The United States has a long history of supporting and working with foreign forces accused of torture, and recent events suggest the practices continue. Just last month, the Associated Press reported that U.S. military interrogators were collaborating with forces from the United Arab Emirates who tortured detainees in Yemen. A video also recently surfaced that appears to show U.S.-allied troops in Syria torturing prisoners.

And from the Philippines to Vietnam to Iraq, Americans have engaged in such acts themselves. Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States began employing methods of torture — including water boarding and stress positions — under the euphemism “enhanced interrogation.” According to the new Amnesty International report, when researchers confronted a representative of Cameroon’s minister of defense with accounts of prisoners being bound, suspended by ropes, and beaten, he claimed the practice was “exploitation approfondie.” Translation: enhanced interrogation.

Culled from The Intercept