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Mimi Mefo Info has in an attempt to dig into the circumstances under which some Kondengui detainees were arrested in Nigeria and transferred to Yaounde gotten the chilling story of nine of them.
We have it on good authority that on March 1, 2018 at Charlsma Hotel in Calabar, Cross River State in Nigeria, armed men carried out mass arrests at about 7:30 p.m.
Elements of the Nigerian military, our source said, broke into hotel rooms and took away its occupants, including the hotel’s manager.
It was here that Fopah Rachel and her baby were arrested. Most of those apprended were officially registered as refugees in Nigeria.
“The Southern Cameroonians and some Nigerians were taken at gunpoint to the 13th Military Barracks in Calabar. While the Nigerians were identified and set free, the Southern Cameroonians were held back,” our source said.
Baby Caleb, its mother, the hotel manager and nine young men were held back.
Our trusted source recounts that: “The suspects were all identified and their details registered by the gun-totting soldiers. The captives were then taken to the Nigerian Special Branch Police (SSARS) where they were also registered and locked up in cells. The next morning at about 11 a.m., the military returned to the police department and carried the detainees back to their barracks. There, they spent a night, and very early morning on March 3, 2018, at about 4:00 a.m., the detainees were taken out of their detention rooms, their hands and legs cuffed and thrown into a bus. They were taken to Abuja, arriving there at about 7 p.m. on March 3, 2018.
“When they arrived at a certain Government Residential Area, the arrested Southern Cameroonians were blindfold and moved into a fenced compound, most probably the Nigerian Military Intelligence department.
“They spent seven days there and early morning of March 10, 2018, they were blindfolded, their hands and legs cuffed and told that they were being taken back to Calabar where they had been arrested.”
They were instead handed over to Cameroonian Military Personnel. While the Hotel Manager was sent back to Calabar, the others were taken to Yaounde Cameroon on board a military chopper.
Upon their arrival in Yaounde, the suspects were detained at the Secretariat of State for Defense at the National Gendarmerie Headquarters, SED.
Sources say they were left in chains and handcuffs for over ten months.
Aside staying for 64 days without bathing, we learnt that the suspects were often forced to sleep on a wet floor and were fed once a day and could sometimes go for days without food and water.
Early August 2018, baby Caleb and the mother were released and on December 8, 2018, the others were transferred to the Kondengui Central Prison where their fate remains a mystery.
The nine detainees include among others:
- Tantoh Tembag Benjamin (Benji)
- Nji Nelson
- Atoneh Ezikiel
- Owan Bertrand
- Teke Rene
- Mbuh Cedrick
- Ayompe Moses
- Itoe Henry
- Nkwo Beltus
They are due to appear in court tomorrow Wednesday, January 7, 2020.
©Mimi Mefo Info 2020
