A year ago Abdul Karim Ali (AKA) was illegally abducted and taken to the Gendarmerie Stations in Bamenda where he was held incommunicado for four days. He could neither pray nor eat.
Thereafter he was moved from one torture center to another – from the Compagnie, to Groupement and to the Secretariat d’Etat a la Defense – SED. Finally he was moved to the famous Kondengui Maximum Central Prison in Yaoundé.
Initially, the Ambazonian grassroots was perplexed, shocked and overtaken by the sheer illegality, effrontery and impunity. Then shock turned into consternation and then to sorrow and finally to desperation. Desperation has finalized into fear and condemnation. This is despondency. This is because of the loss of a leader and a spiritual guide.
Since August 11, 2022, AKA’s Defense Team has struggled with the fragrant and blatant move, by the system, from one illegality to another. Procedurally and substantively, the Defense Team has witnessed the aggravation of acts of injustice and violations. From his abduction, kidnap, detention, jurisdictional transfers, procedural hiccups and prison movements, nothing can be reconciled on the judicial curve of procedure and process within the certainty of the Constitution, the Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code nor all relevant international instruments espousing the rights of an accused person and the rights of fair and public hearings. The Defense Team is at a loss of words for the travesty of justice in AKA’s case.
When AKA was arrested he was not charged for over six months. During this period he was interrogated almost on a daily basis as to his political opinion, associations and affiliations, movements and locations. His house was searched and his electronic equipment confiscated and retained without inventory. The point here is not that this process and procedure in itself, albeit illegal, is strange and abnormal to an accustomed practitioner in the Cameroun judicial scene. What stands out is the effrontery with which the system was FISHING FOR EVIDENCE TO CHARGE AKA.
He has since August 11, 2022, been moved from Groupement in Mendakwe to Compagnie at the Gendarmerie Legion in Bamenda to SED in Yaoundé and finally to Kondengui Central Prison in Yaoundé. In this almost one year to the date, and counting, AKA is still at the level of the Examining Magistrate to establish probable cause and sustain a charge or charges against him.
During this nightmare, the international diplomatic community, through various emissaries, with the knowledge of AKA’s Defense Team has made attempts, through political and diplomatic channels, to request for procedural and substantive updates from the judicial process about AKA’s case. Through AKA’s Defense Team, there is no indication that any updates were provided.
Today the world is waking up to the grim reality that AKA who was illegally abducted and unjustly detained remains in Kondengui Central Prison and the world is watching and Ambazonia is burning. The Ambazonian grassroots is bearing the brunt of an avoidable and an uncalled for war. This grassroots is tired, fearful and helpless. AKA’s Defense Team feels hapless like the proverbial reed in a tide. The judicial system and the political apparatus that sustains it continues with impunity. The only stakeholder to do something is the International Community. The Diplomats, most of whom know or have reason to know AKA personally, can and should use their high offices to contact and talk to their Host through the different channels that are traditional and customary to diplomatic practice – the Presidency, the Ministers of Defense, External Relations and the Prime Ministry.
Just as AKA’s face and person is tucked away in the inhumanity of Kondengui, the Diplomatic community can without notice or noise put the illegal arrest and unjust detention of AKA on the front burner of all diplomatic confabs and concertations. It is the private pressure, away from the glare of all the hardliners that will persuade the regime of Yaounde to really take a look at the facts, or lack thereof, in the case file wherein AKA is a true Prisoner of Conscience.
Whether AKA is released or not the stark reality of the Ambazonian crisis is staring the Yaounde regime in the face and the reality of the ever rising humanitarian crisis will sit like an ugly sore within the diplomatic community who have a collective stake of protecting fundamental human rights. On the contrary, if AKA is released tomorrow there will be a release of the current pressure that is fomenting within the Ambazonian grassroots because of the incarceration of their spiritual leader. As a bonus, the release of this pressure will serve as a mollifier and pacifier in the quest for an appropriate setting and mindset for dialogue. This would be a double victory for everyone even if it is one year too late.
Joseph A. Fru, Esquire
Counsel for Abdul Karim Ali.
