Former inmate recounts how Cameroon security operatives torture and kill Anglophone detainees

Two Anglophones were killed at 11 PM

“Cameroonians need to know, SEMIL is a torture centre where they kill people”

Sebastien Ebala reveals that at the time he was arrested on April 17, 2020, while in his cell at the military security unit in Yaoundé, two Anglophones were brought in around 11 PM. SEMIL elements laid them and cut off their heads, broke their bones then wrapped their bodies in the dustbin for disposal.

What sent him to prison

Sebastien Ebala who spent 2 years in prison was arrested in April 2020, after he staged a protest at the Post Office in Yaoundé.

He had called on Cameroonians to come out in numbers and ask President Paul Biya to vacate the Presidency, leaving way for MRC President Maurice Kamto to be installed as President of the Republic.

“I decided to go out because I thought that the usual talks on the radio are good, but we needed action…I had to mobilize Cameroonians and make the illegal regime to be frightened…I needed to prepare them about what I wanted them to do.” He said in a live video in April 2020.

On April 17, 2020, he was arrested, interrogated, and then released but on May 20, 2020, he was rearrested and imprisoned for two years. Orders came from the head of military security, Colonel Emile Bankui. Before his arrest, Sebastien Ebala tells Naja TV that his colleagues and himself were tortured to near death by elements from the military security unit, SEMIL.

Arrival at SEMIL

After arriving at the head office of SEMIL located inside the ministry of defense, they met with the head of the unit, Colonel Emile Bankui who asked his elements to take the Activists to the Laboratory.

This “Labo” (Laboratory) is the torture room and it’s located beside his office. It is also beside the room where you can find the electric chair used to torture civilians. I was installed in this room and asked to lie straight, they took a long whip and tortured me…Their main objective was me confessing that I was sent by MRC president Maurice Kamto to make the declarations”

He narrates that after the first minutes of torture he said nothing.

“Kamto was not aware of what I was doing, he is not even my friend so why will I say that he was the one…the SEMIL head said himself, placing his right leg on my body, he said, I can kill you here and make reports that the operation had a mix-up,” Ebala said.

Sebastien Ebala was later arraigned and appeared in court four times where he was slammed with 2 years imprisonment. He was released on May 27, 2022.