Cameroon separatists' lawyers demand proof clients still alive
Thursday November 01 2018
Lawyer Christopher Ndong, for the detained Cameroon secession activists, talking to the press after the hearing in Yaoundé on November 1, 2011. NDI EUGENE NDI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Lawyers have asked for proof of life for some 10 leaders of the secession movement in the Anglophone Cameroon who were arrested and extradited from Nigeria earlier this year.
The lawyers made the submission after the government failed to present their clients at a hearing at the Centre Appeal court in Yaoundé on Thursday—the fifth time a hearing was taking place without the accused.
“We entertain fear that if they cannot be brought even before the court of appeal, then there is something wrong. So we said if they come again in the next session without them, they should bring certificates of life, to show that they are alive,” said barrister Christopher Ndong, for the defendants.
The body
Mr Ndong said they filed a habeas corpus appeal--a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge, but were surprised their clients were still not brought to court during Thursday’s hearing, despite an order for their to that effect.
“Incidentally, a Colonel from the State Defence Secretariat (SED) came to court and promised he was following up and will bring the body as required by the habeas corpus principle. We agreed and the case adjourn to November 1 for the very last time,” Mr Ndong explained.
The activists, including Mr Julius Ayuk Tabe, the president of a self-declared breakaway state of Ambazonia, have been held incommunicado in a detention facility in Yaoundé since they were arrested in Nigeria and extradited to Cameroon in January. The suspects symbolically proclaimed the independence of the hypothetical country on October 1 last year.
An escalation
Prior to their extradition, Mr Tabe and the co-accused had been "held in secret" at a hotel in Abuja, according to Amnesty International. The human rights advocacy group said the activists were at risk of “unfair trial before a military court and the deeply disturbing possibility of torture” in Cameroon.
Their subsequent deportation marked an escalation in the crisis that has rocked the two English speaking regions for nearly two years now.