Nine Years In Prison, No Trial: The Cameroon State Is Burying Innocent People Alive

Kome Melchizedek Kongnyuy left Yaoundé in 2017 to attend his sister’s wedding. He never returned a free man. Nearly nine years later, he remains in prison without judgment.

Kome Melchizedek Kongnyuy was a mechanic in Yaoundé.

He had lived and worked in the capital since 2012. In 2017, he travelled to his village to attend his sister’s wedding. It should have been an ordinary family journey. Instead, it became the beginning of almost nine years behind bars.

MMI News has learned that Kome was arrested on December 5, 2017, during the heat of the Anglophone crisis. The reason, according to information available to MMI News, was not that he had been found guilty of a crime. It was that authorities were looking for another person whose names were similar to his.

His family, friends and relatives reportedly tried to explain that he was not the person being sought. They tried to prove his identity. They tried to get him released.

But the system did what it has done to many poor and voiceless Cameroonians: it swallowed him.

Nearly nine years later, Kome has still not been properly judged.

No conviction. No fair trial. No closure.

Just prison.

A life put on hold

For Kome, the years have not passed as normal years. They have passed in confinement.

He has reportedly seen his health worsen inside prison. Those familiar with his situation say he fears that public attention could bring reprisals against him in the same place where he is being held. That fear says a lot about Cameroon’s prison system.

A man who says he is innocent should not have to fear punishment for asking for justice. A prisoner should not have to choose between silence and survival.

But this is what happens when prisons become places where human beings disappear. Families plead. Lawyers struggle. Judges delay. Files move slowly. Hearings are adjourned. Years pass.

And the person inside the cell keeps waiting.

Innocent until proven guilty — but punished anyway

Kome has not been convicted. Under the law, that means he remains innocent.

This is not a small point. It is the foundation of justice. A state cannot arrest a citizen, fail to prove its case for nearly a decade, and still behave as if the burden is on the prisoner to explain why he should be free.

If the state has evidence against Kome, it should bring that evidence before a court.

If it has no evidence, he should be released.

There is no justice in keeping a man in prison for nine years without judgment. There is only punishment without trial.

And when punishment comes before trial, the law has already failed.

Kondengui and the shame of Cameroon’s prisons

Kome’s case is not only about one man. It is about a prison system that has become a national disgrace.

MMI News recently published a video showing the crowded and unhealthy conditions inside Kondengui prison in Yaoundé. The images showed human beings packed into spaces that were never built to hold so many people.

Kondengui was built for about 1,500 inmates. By October 2024, it reportedly held around six times that number.

Amnesty International has also cited shocking prison occupancy rates in Cameroon: 432% in Kondengui, 729% in Bertoua, 567% in Kumba Main Prison, and 481% in Sangmelima.

These are not just numbers. They are human beings sleeping, eating, falling sick and waiting for justice in places that are far beyond capacity.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly documented overcrowding, arbitrary arrests, prolonged detention, torture allegations, poor medical care, disease outbreaks, and inhumane prison conditions in Cameroon.

Human Rights Watch reported that at least six inmates died during a cholera outbreak at New Bell prison in Douala. Amnesty International once said detainees arrested in connection with the Anglophone crisis were “packed like sardines”.

This is the same system in which Kome has spent nearly nine years of his life.

The forgotten prisoners of the Anglophone crisis

The Anglophone crisis did not only produce deaths, burned villages and displaced families. It also produced thousands of arrests.

Some people were fighters. Some were suspects. Some were simply caught in the wrong place, with the wrong name, from the wrong region, at the wrong time.

Many were poor. Many had no strong legal support. Many had no voice loud enough to reach the people who mattered.

So they remained in prison.

Cameroon’s courts have been painfully slow in handling many of these cases. For some detainees, the delay itself has become the sentence.

Kome’s story reflects that wider injustice. He was arrested in 2017. By 2026, he is still waiting for the state to prove what it claims, or admit that it cannot.

No serious country should accept this.

Two Cameroons

There is another Cameroon, and it is very comfortable.

While thousands of citizens languish in overcrowded cells, many of them, like Kome Kongnyuy, never tried, Paul Biya and his wife Chantal continue to enjoy long, luxurious stays abroad, including in Switzerland. The head of state governs one of the poorest and most abused prison systems in the region from the comfort of five-star hotels on another continent.

The contrast is not a coincidence. It is the point. A country where prisoners are treated like animals, where citizens are treated like subjects, and where public power is handled like family property. That is not an unfortunate side effect of hard times. It is a choice, made and remade, year after year, by the people at the top.

What did Cameroonians do to deserve this level of contempt in their own country?

A country where the poor vanish into prison

There is a class issue here too.

In Cameroon, powerful people rarely rot in overcrowded cells for nine years without trial. The people who suffer this kind of injustice are usually people who live below the poverty line, the unknown, the rural, the voiceless, and the people without connections.

They are the ones who wait endlessly for a judge.

They are the ones whose families sell property, borrow money, travel long distances, and beg officials.

They are the ones who get sick in silence.

They are the ones whose lives are destroyed before any court has even pronounced them guilty.

This is why Kome’s case matters. It shows how easily an ordinary Cameroonian can disappear into the prison system and be forgotten.

The state must answer

The Ministry of Justice, the courts and the prison administration must answer a simple question: why is Kome Melchizedek Kongnyuy still in prison nearly nine years after his arrest without judgment?

This is not a favour being requested. It is a demand for justice.

If he committed a crime, let the state prove it in court.

If he did not, let him go home.

What cannot continue is this cruel middle ground where a man is not convicted, not freed, not heard, and not treated as fully human.

Kome left Yaoundé for a wedding. He ended up in prison.

Nearly nine years later, his case stands as a painful reminder of what Cameroon has become for many of its weakest citizens: a country where the justice system can take your freedom first and ask questions later.

That is not justice.

That is state cruelty.

MMI News