Cameroon state officials ordered hit on Martinez Zogo – RSF

CNA Special Report:
Cameroon’s Justice Minister ordered the killing of investigative journalist Martinez Zogo, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have said in a statement which CNA has seen.

According to RSF, “Zogo was followed for a week, in order to establish the pattern of his movements, until his abduction on the evening of 17 January”.

Zogo’s mutilated corpse was found in Soa, a suburb of the capital Yaounde on January 22 in an already decomposing state with his “fingers cut off, his arms and legs were broken in several places, and a steel rod was rammed into his anus” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, citing eyewitnesses who found the body.

Prior to his murder, the presenter of Embouteillage (French for ‘traffic jam’) on Amplitude FM had been speaking out against a case of corruption involving a high-profile businessman, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga who has close ties with Cameroon’s Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze.

According to an RSF statement, more than 20 state intelligence officers working for Cameroon’s General Directorate for External Investigations (DGRE) were arrested and the head of the institution, Léopold Maxime Eko Eko denied any knowledge of plans to silence Zogo but his deputy, Lt. Col. Justin Danwe in a handwritten confession detailed the plans to kill Zogo and admitted that he was the head of the unit that carried out the assassination, RSF added.

Because Danwe stated in his confession that he told his superior about the planned murder, RSF wrote that Danwe’s “account shows that Zogo’s murder was a state crime”.

The RSF statement further revealed that “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” and that “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 identified. They left Chouta for dead at the roadside, but he ended up surviving.”

RSF stated 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” and lauded the investigations opened by President Paul Biya. However, the press freedom organization regretted that “the outcome of the investigations remains very uncertain as the affair’s ramifications reach up to the highest level of the state”.

In 2019, another reporter, Samuel Wazizi died in police custody but the authorities claimed he died from a sepsis, which was never made clear how he got it in the first place.

Before that, TV anchor, Mimi Mefo had been arrested in Douala for reporting that the American Baptist missionary who was killed in crossfire in Bamenda – had likely been shot by government soldiers. She was jailed for several days and a public outcry and international condemnation led to her release.
Nfor Hanson, another prominent TV reporter was also threatened after interviewing Cameroon’s communications minister at the time.

Cameroon is considered by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as one of the worst jailers of journalists in the world and by Reporters Without Borders as one of the worst countries to be a journalist in.

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