Cameroon troops held for clash
2010-03-16 22:00
Yaounde - Nineteen members of an elite army unit in Camerooon have been punished, including 16 who were dismissed from the ranks, for acts of brutality against civilians, a government statement said on Tuesday.
Defence Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo'o on Monday ordered "disciplinary sanctions" against "certain stray elements in the Rapid Battalion Intervention - Delta (BIR Delta)", which is stationed in the Bakassi peninsula, it said.
The disciplinary action was in response to "acts of brutality carried out on the night of February 23 to 24... against the civilian population of Limbe," in the southwest of Cameroon.
Sixteen of the soldiers were "definitively dismissed from the BIR" and three of those were "taken for the principal instigators of the acts". Those three will go to prison for 60 days and appear before the army's disciplinary board.
According to an official toll, 24 people were injured in Limbe, three of them seriously, when clashes broke out on February 23 between troops of the BIR and civilians.
Trouble began when a BIR soldier had his cellphone taken following a fight with some fishermen, a security source told AFP, and Delta force members began smashing up cars that got in their way.
The government spokesperson, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, announced the toll but gave no explanation of what he described as an "incident".
The defence minister on Monday announced that 13 of the soldiers will go to jail for 45 days, while three officers commanding the troops who ran wild have been ordered incarcerated for 20 days.
The BIR Delta was initially set up to deal with "the emergence of new forms of criminality", according to an official statement.
An official report on the human rights situation in Cameroon in 2007 and 2008 spoke of renegade members of the battalion and expressed concern at their "arbitrary arrests and sequestration" of civilians.