Cameroon: Hired military witnesses fumble in storming Anglophone leaders’ trial

The Yaounde Military Tribunal, July 27, was like pressure cooker as the trial of Anglophone leaders took a decisive kink.

Two military officers who came in as prosecution witnesses were left dumfounded by a battery of defence Counsels.  

The first prosecution witness, a Gendarmerie Colonel, who was brought in to describe the violence he witnessed at the Bamenda Commercial Avenue on December 8, 2016, said the perpetrators were a crowd of demonstrators.

The court asked him to critically look inside the courtroom and the detainees and see if he could recognise anybody he saw among the irate Bamenda crowd.

After a thorough scanning of those inside the courtroom, the Colonel said he could not identify anyone in the crowd.

The second witness was the Commissioner of the burnt Police Station at Metta Quarters, Bamenda. After scrupulous judicial interrogation, the Commissioner too said he could not identify anybody among the detainees who was part of the crowd.

The matter was adjourned to August 31 for the court to continue hearing the rest of the witnesses.

The two military witnesses, who may have come to have an easy ride in court certainly would have gone  back home with a different perspective and will now caution the other five witnesses to watch their backs when they stepped into the dock to bear witnesses in the case against the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium. 

The case, which has suffered several adjournments in the past seven months, took a different twist on July 27 when the session lasted for several hours.

The seven witnesses, all uniform officers, were presented by the prosecution to testify against the accused. But none of them was able to identify any of the 27 detainees in the crowd that disrupted the CPDM rally of December, 8, 2016, at the Bamenda Commercial Avenue.

As the trial has effectively begun many Anglophones are anxious to see what August 31 will bring forth.