A Mimi Mefo Info exclusive investigation by Tata Mbunwe
An MMI investigation has found that police officers in Buea, in the Southwest Region of Cameroon, tortured and killed Ngoule Linus Fonteh, a third-year student of International Relations at the University of Buea, and then attempted to cover it up.
Policemen in civilian attire arrested Fonteh at his hostel in Buea on Wednesday, March 15, alongside his friend Mboh Giress, a postgraduate student whose whereabouts are still unknown.
They were detained and tortured by men working with the SEMIL, an investigative arm of the police.
Fonteh died during the torture and the officers deposited his body at the Buea Regional Hospital mortuary at about 1 am on Thursday, March 16.
Fonteh’s family disheartened
One of Fonteh’s close relatives told MMI she was telephoned on Thursday morning by an unidentified caller who informed her to come to Buea and collect her brother’s corpse.
She was shocked and dismayed by the crass manner in which the information was conveyed.
“That Thursday morning I received a call asking me if I was Linus’ sister. When I agreed they asked me to come to Buea and collect his corpse. When we got to the mortuary, we realised that the bill had been paid by some unidentified men. When I tried calling back the number that called me, no one was picking up,” the relative told MMI.
The anonymous caller claimed Fonteh was killed in an armed combat with the military, an unfounded allegation, made in an attempt to insinuate that he was a separatist fighter.
However, MMI found that the claim made by the police was an attempt to cover up their crime after the body deposited at the mortuary had been linked back to them.
Upon reaching Buea, the relatives were confused about whom to go to for answers.
All the police stations they went to claimed ignorance of the issue until they met the head of SEMIL, who sat down with them alongside human rights advocate Barrister Agbor Balla and attempted to foist on them the narrative that Ngoule Fonteh was aiding separatist fighters.
“We found out that they were taken by the SEMIL police. The police brought his friend to show them his room and, they searched the room before leaving with both of them. The friend is still with the police,” the family member added.
Evidence exonerates Fonten
To get deeper insights into how Fonteh was abused and killed, MMI’s investigator, went to different locations over the past two days, to uncover the truth.
We will withhold his true identity for security reasons, but let’s just call him Kilian.
Kilian spoke with Fonteh’s neighbours who witnessed their arrest and also spoke directly with his family.
“I found out that security officers “en civil” from SEMIL stationed in Malingo, Buea, had abducted Mboh Giress, the roommate and brother to Ngoule Linus, forced him to lead them to their hostel wherein Linus would be abducted as well and their house thoroughly searched before whisking them away. This is according to witnesses in the neighborhood and the family head to Ngule Linus,” Killian confirmed.
“The family head confided in me that SEMIL is doing everything to cover up for the murder of their son by attributing terrible accusations, including that their son was an Amba boy who planted bombs in UB and in a taxi in town.
“They are trying to intimidate and silence them so that they may collect the corpse and go away in silence. Ngoule Linus, they say, was the only hope for their family’s future as they could sacrifice everything just to make sure he attended classes and paid for his handouts,” Kilian furthered.
Also, human rights advocate, Barrister Agbor Balla, the founder of Centre for Human Rights and Democracy for Africa, corroborated MMI findings in a post he made on Friday.
“Two young male students from the University of Buea were taken away from their student residential hostels, ‘mini cite’, in Molyko by unidentified people. The first – Ngoule Linus, a student of International Relations, was later found dead (16 March 2023) and his corpse deposited at the Buea Mortuary,” Agbor Balla wrote.
“The second Mboh Giress – a postgraduate public administration – student is still missing. We are still carrying out our investigations to know what happened.”
A promising youth leader, and peace advocate, Ngoule Linus Fonteh was a student pursuing a degree in International Relations at the University of Buea. He was reported to have served and volunteered with several Cameroonian civil society organisations.
The youth leader was also a former Junior Parliamentarian for Ngoketunjia Division of the Northwest Region.
When Ngoule was killed, he was wearing the T-shirt of Y4CSE, an organisation he had been volunteering with.
One of his classmates who spoke to us on Thursday said they knew him as a vibrant peace advocate and promising youth leader.
She said it was disheartening to hear the false accusations the police had levied on him.
Ngoule has not turned a blind eye to atrocities committed against civilians trapped in the armed conflict in the Anglophone Regions.
“I stand against illegal arrest of innocent civilians, let them go after the boys in the bush,” Ngoule reacted on his social media platform after soldiers arrested and beat up over 40 youths in Matoh, Meme Division, early in March 2023.
He has also been a peace crusader; in 2022, he said: “It’s time to embrace peace, let peace reign in Africa and the world.”
Normalized military-police killings
On the same day Fonteh and his friend were arbitrarily arrested, military officers in Buea killed two young men whom they claimed were separatist fighters.
In a video that went viral online, Chief John Ewome of Bwassa village, a soldier with the Cameroon military, could be seen stumping on the bodies, boasting they were separatist fighters he had killed in combat.
Information that circulated online indicated that Fonteh was among the two bodies that were displayed by the roadside.
However, MMI investigations found that Fonteh was not among those whose bodies were displayed in public. The two young men whose bodies were displayed in Muea were killed at Ekona, a few kilometers from Buea, before being brought to the place where the military engaged in a public exhibition of their corpses.
Our sources confirmed that they were killed at about 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and their bodies were brought and dumped at Muea at about 5 p.m.
MMI findings further revealed the two young men were unarmed at the time they were killed. One of them, nicknamed Bobo, is said to have been a former separatist fighter.
Their killing, in addition to that of Ngoule Fonteh, added to a series of atrocities committed by the Cameroonian police and military officers in the Anglophone Regions, where armed conflict has been raging for the sixth year now.
“Usually, the victims are tagged as separatist fighters, but without any proof. Officers have often used the separatist tag to get away with extrajudicial killings,” said Kilian.
“It’s nothing new that when they commit crimes against humanity, they always tag the victims with separatist connotations to use it as justification,” he said.
He added that the police must be held accountable for killing Fonteh Linus and should be forced to produce his friend Mboh Giress.
The normalisation of such killings by Cameroon security agents leaves many wondering if there will be any justice for these young men.
By Tata Mbunwe and Amina Hilda
