Joe Dinga Pefok
29 September 2008
Yaounde-based publisher of the French language weekly, La Détente Libre, Lewis Medjo, who was arrested September 22 in Douala, is due to appear at the Douala Court of First Instance in Bonanjo, October 3.
Medjo is being charged with the "propagation of false information". The state counsel, after a long interrogation Friday, September 26, ordered that Medjo be remanded in custody at the Judicial Police, and be transferred to New Bell Prison on September 29, to await trial.
The Post learnt that the decision by the judiciary to get the trial start very fast is not unconnected with the numerous reactions that have since been pouring in from international organisations as well as human rights activists, calling for Medjo's release.
It is unclear why this case is being handled by the Douala judiciary when Medjo and the personalities he is accused of having defamed, are all based in Yaounde.Meanwhile, rumours had earlier floated that a warrant of arrest had been issued for Medjo .The issue became serious when one of Medjo's friends, Jean Robert Wafo, a councillor and local SDF official, was mistakenly taken for Medjo and arrested.
Wafo had gone on behalf of Medjo to pick up a purported advert from an advertiser, following a telephone call. The story about the advert was seemingly fabricated to lure Medjo into the police dragnet.
Upon arrival at the venue, plainclothes security operatives picked Wafo and whisked him off to the 3rd Police District, then to the Judicial Police in Bonanjo. Wafo's plea that he was not Medjo, fell on deaf ears. It took the intervention of a senior SDF official, Barrister Augustin Mbami, to convince the police that there was an issue of mistaken identity before they released Wafo.
Meanwhile, Medjo had since then been shuttling between Douala and Yaounde, without the police catching him. But not on September 22 when he arrived Douala to print his paper.
He had alongside dozens of other journalists, attended a dinner at Akwa Palace Hotel to celebrate the Government Delegate to the Douala City Council, Dr. Fritz Ntone Ntone's second anniversary in office.
When the occasion ended at about 10.30 pm, unknown to Medjo, the Littoral Judicial Police boss, Vincent Nga Minkoa, and two of his men, had set up a trap outside the hotel.Medjo walked into it. He was arrested and whisked off to detention. The police chief, however, told the journalists who followed to the station, that they were simply executing the instruction of the Attorney General of the Province.
Fotso's Passport
Medjo, whom The Post visited at the Judicial Police on September 25, said his detention was linked to two articles which his newspaper had published. One of which was published on August 14 about Yves Michel Fotso's passport, which the police had seized last April.But as was confirmed by Fotso himself in a recent interview he granted some private television stations, somebody had contacted his father, Victor Fotso, and proposed a deal with the passport.
The old man was reportedly asked to pay a huge sum of money in exchange for his son's passport. It was even suggested Fotso should use the passport and sneak out of the country, for some forces in the country were bent to destroy him in the ongoing investigation in the presidential jet scam.
Fotso's father reportedly rejected the proposal. As his son disclosed during the recent interviews, he (Victor) wrote to the Head of State to express concern that his son's passport which was seized by the police was in the streets, and had become an object for shady business.
It had reported that it was a police woman who met Victor with the passport, and that the woman who claimed to be fronting for hierarchy in the deal, had asked for FCFA 100 million.
Most striking about the publication of that story, was that the paper also carried facsimiles of some pages of Fotso's passports.
The publication shocked the police hierarchy in Yaounde, when the facsimiles were discovered to be genuine pages of Fotso's passport.The Delegate General of National Security, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo'o, reportedly got more furious that Medjo directly accused him in the newspaper article of having sent an agent with the passport to dupe Fotso.
Mebe Ngo'o.Security sources say Medjo has an informant in the police who must be uncovered no matter what it takes.
Dipanda Mouelle
Another story which reportedly ran Medjo into problems had to do with the President of the Supreme Court, Alexis Dipanda Mouelle.It is said that he was supposed to go on retirement last year, but President Biya extended his tenure by two years, meaning he would retire only in 2009.
In the story, which also carried a facsimile of the presidential circular, it was noted that Biya extended the stay of some senior judges who were also supposed to go on retirement, by more than the two years he gave Dipanda, though some of them were older than him (Dipanda).
Medjo had in his own analysis of the circular, concluded that Biya no longer wants Dipanda around, and that he had decided to dump him in 2009.The President of the Supreme Court reportedly got very bitter over the article.However, the police as well as the state counsel, throughout their interrogations would not tell Medjo who formally made the complaint that led to his arrest.
Abah Abah Connection
Observers say the root cause of Medjo's ordeal might be connected to his close relationship with the former Minister of Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah, who is presently in detention at Kondengui Prison, for alleged embezzlement of state funds.
For one thing, Medjo, who was seen by many to have been the closest journalist to Abah Abah since when he was Director of Taxes, had been engaged with Abah Abah in the fight for positioning between him and some elite from the same Division, especially Mebe Ngo'o.
Mebe Ngo'o reportedly made some overtures aimed at stretching an olive branch to Medjo, following Abah Abah's fall. But Medjo would not "betray" his long time friend, by sitting down with "the enemy."
His story on Fotso's passport in which he linked Mebe Ngo'o to the racket to extort money from Victor Fotso, is thus likely to be looked at in many ways by the police boss.
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