3 Cameroon journos charged
2010-03-11 22:20
Yaounde - Three Cameroonian journalists have been charged with fraud and using forged documents and detained in Yaounde's central prison, a judicial source said on Thursday.
Serges Sabouang, Robert Mintsa and Bibi Ngota, respectively the managing editors of La Nation, Le Devoir and Cameroun Express, were charged on Wednesday and sent to the Kodengui prison, said a source close to the case, who asked not to be named.
According to this source, the journalists copied the signature of President Paul Biya's secretary general, Laurent Esso, on documents "which they used to blackmail him" in a bid to obtain money.
The three face between 10 and 20 years in prison, the source said.
A fourth journalist wanted in connection with the same affair, Simon Nko'o, a reporter on the weekly Bebela, "can't be found", according to the editor of his paper, Henriette Ekwe.
'Barbaric torture'
Sabouang and Mintsa were arrested by police on February 26, "not because of a news article, even less because they are journalists, but because they made false documents with which they carried out incorrect actions", a police source told AFP at the time.
Ngota was arrested for the same reasons "three or four days ago", the judicial source said.
Sabouang and Nko'o had already been held for nearly a week at the beginning of February at the General Directorate of External Research (DGRE), an intelligence agency, where they were accused of possessing "documents that are compromising for public figures, including Laurent Esso," Ekwe said.
At the beginning of March, the National Union of Journalists of Cameroon charged in a statement that Nko'o and Sabouang had been victims of "numerous barbaric acts of torture".
The Paris-based Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF - Reporters Without Borders) and the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists protested at the detention of the two men.