Bishops twaddle Gov’t autopsy report, insist Mgr. Bala Was Brutally Assassinated

The President of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NEC) Mgr. Samuel Kléda, says the Bishops of Cameroon still stand on their position that Mgr. Jean Marie Benoit Bala was brutally murdered.

Kleda was speaking in Yaounde, during a press conference to welcome members of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of Central Africa (ACERAC) in Yaoundé.

The Bishops of Cameroons re-echoed their stand on the Death of the Bishop of Bafia, Mgr Bala, barely four days after the Government of Cameroon, through the Attorney General of the Yaounde Appeal Court, Jean Fils Ntamack, on July 4, issued an official statement, contradicting NEC’s June 13 pronouncement that Mgr. Bala was brutally murdered. 

The Yaounde Appeal Court Attorney General’s statement was based on an undisclosed autopsy report, conducted on the remains of the fallen Bishop by experts from Europe.

In his July 4 press release, Jean Fils Ntamack, had stated that “After initial examination by two teams of local medical doctors on June 2 and 22, 2017, the decision was taken to resort to international expertise through INTERPOL.

The forensic medical doctors sent by INTERPOL for that purpose, namely Professor Michael Tsokos, Director of the Berlin Institute of Forensic Medicine in Germany, and Doctor Mark Mulder, Coordinator of the Disaster Victim Identification Unit of INTERPOL, arrived Cameroon on June 29, 2017.

After close examination, they noted the absence of any traces of violence on the body of the deceased and concluded, in this light, that drowning was the most probable cause of the Bishop’s death.”

Though Ntamack said investigations to ascertain the circumstances under which the Prelate died are still on-going, his said the remains have been handed over to the National Episcopal Council for burial.