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A few weeks after his release from the Yaoundé-Kondengui Maximum Prison, Sebastien Ebala may have plunged himself into more trouble with the regime following shocking revelations he made in an interview with Jean Bruno Tagne, of Naja TV.
The Genesis
Sebastien Ebala was arrested in 2020 for attempting to organize a protest march against President Paul Biya in Yaoundé.
Sebastien Ebala argued at the time that President Paul Biya had lost the 2018 Presidential race to Professor Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), party and so intended to apply maximum pressure on the regime to respect the people’s choice.
Ebala then, made a series of live broadcasts from his social media accounts, calling on the population of Yaoundé to massively protest against President Biya’s continuous grip on power.
He was subsequently brutally apprehended by a battalion of fully armed uniformed men from his friend’s residence together with 2 others and they were driven to the Secretariat of State For Defense, (SED), where they would, later on, undergo prolonged tortures.
At the SED detention center where he was brutally tortured by Colonel Joel Emile Bamkoui, Ebala said in his interview that they tried in vain to make him confess that CRM President Professor Maurice Kamto had set him up to organize the protests.
“I can confidently tell you that were I, not a man, what I was made to go through in that torture center would have made me succumb, but I stood firm because I knew Kamto never put me up to anything.” He told Jean Bruno Tagne.
In his interview, he also mentioned that his torture was meticulously supervised by the Head of Communication for MINDEF, Colonel Cyril Serge Atomfack, together with Colonel Joel Emile Bamkoui who cracked up the pressure for him to implicate Professor Maurice Kamto.
The activist also narrated of having witnessed some other detainees who he believes were linked to the Anglophone crisis brutally killed by breaking their knees, after which he was told the same would be done to him if he did not speak.
“I told God if it was His will for me to die then I will die because I could not implicate Prof Maurice Kamto. He knew nothing about what I had initiated, he isn’t even my friend.” Ebala revealed.
Post Torture
After being tortured to near death, Ebala says he was later on transferred to the Kondengui Maximum Prison, where he would, later on, spend 2 years behind bars.
Weeks after his release from jail, Ebala has issued another distress call of serious threats made against his life. The threats are the results of his doubling down on the allegations he made against the regime in his interview with Naja TV.
The activist has published a short video, in which he has said “…threats have been made on my life by the criminal, Colonel Joel Emile Bamkoui, I feel in danger, and it is not from fright, because many of you know what I represent…”
As a motive, Ebala said that Colonel Bamkoui had accused the activist of naming him as the killer of Bishop Jean Benoit Bala.
“He told me in a phone call that since I had started talking again, what he had done to me before was nothing compared to what is to come… He told me yesterday that I accused him of killing Bishop Jean Benoit Bala, I don’t know when I said that.” He revealed this in the short video.
According to Ebala, Colonel Emile Bamkoui is simply bent on eliminating him, after his failed attempt to do so in 2020. “I want the whole world to know that if anything happens to me, then hold the criminal Joel Emile Bamkoui responsible…”
There has been a massive crackdown on activists and human rights defenders across Cameroon since 2016 when the Anglophone Crisis started and intensified in 2018 with the contested results of the presidential elections. President Biya who this year clocks 40 years in power, together with his regime have ensured that all dissenting voices are silenced.
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