17 January 2023 | CPJ
Cameroonian journalist found dead
Torture
Martinez Zogo, the managing director of the privately owned Cameroonian radio broadcaster Amplitude FM, was found dead on January 22, 2023, after going missing five days earlier.
At about 8 p.m. on January 17, four hooded men in a black Prado car followed Zogo while he was driving to his home outside the capital city of Yaoundé. Zogo sought help at a nearby gendarmerie station, and the attackers collided with his vehicle as he drove to the station’s closed gate, prompting Zogo to exit his car and run for help, according to those sources. The journalist shouted, “Help me, they want to kill me,” according to a witness cited in an audio news report reviewed by CPJ.
The men forced Zogo into their car and fled the scene, according to those reports and Ekambi.
On January 22, the journalist’s body was found naked and dumped in a quarry, and was taken to a hospital in Yaoundé for an autopsy.
The Cameroonian government said in a January 22 statement that Zogo’s body had “suffered substantial physical abuse” and was in an “advanced state of composition.” The statement said investigations were underway to find the perpetrators of such an “unacceptable and unspeakable crime, which cannot be justified under any circumstances.”
Zogo, whose full name was Arsène Saloman Mbani Zogo, hosted the daily current affairs program “Embouteillage” (Gridlock) on Amplitude FM, where he discussed corruption allegations involving prominent people, according to media reports.
Two weeks before his abduction, Zogo told listeners that people involved in corrupt activities wanted to kill him, reports said. Three people familiar with Zogo’s case told CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal that Zogo had received a call weeks before his abduction from an unidentified person telling him to be careful because someone wanted to kidnap and murder him.
A local journalist who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, also citing fear of reprisal, said Zogo had told him two days before his abduction that he had received death threats from Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, a prominent Cameroonian businessman and media owner.
Zogo had recently criticized the payment of tens of billions of Central African francs from the Cameroonian treasury that allegedly benefitted Belinga.
Zogo had also said on-air that he possessed documents relating to General Ivo Desancio Yenwo, the director of presidential security, which he intended to make public, according to media reports. He also said he had documents proving that senior state officials had stolen several million U.S. dollars in public funds since 2013, and he also sent a dossier to several institutions and media outlets about alleged public sector corruption.
An anonymous former Cameroonian intelligence officer quoted in two local news reports alleged that Zogo may have been the victim of a political power struggle that sought to frame Belinga.
Neighbors saw unidentified men outside Zogo’s home several nights before his abduction, and the brakes on his widow’s vehicle had been recently tampered with, according to news reports, which said she was in a car accident two days before her husband’s disappearance.
Read the original article: https://cpj.org/data/people/martinez-zogo/
