At least eight members of Cameroon’s defence and security forces have been arrested and detained for torturing a civilian in Ndu, a locality in the restive North West Region of country, the spokesperson of the military, Atonfack Guemo said on Monday.
There has been outrage after an amateur video appeared online last weekend showing the uniform men interrogating the civilian before torturing him to near death.
The defence and security forces were clearly seen on the video, interrogating and torturing the man on for not being able to reveal the whereabouts of his brother whom the accused of being a separatist fighter.
In a statement released by the spokesman of Cameroon’s Ministry of Defence, Atonfack Guemo, the man being tortured in the vieo is called Jean Fai Fungong and was suspected of being a “criminal relay and local terrorist”.
Those caught in the video torturing the man, two gendarmes, two soldiers and four police officers have all been arrested and detained at the Ndu Territorial Gendarmerie Brigade “on the instructions of the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defence”, Atonfack said.
He added that “disciplinary, administrative and judicial investigations prescribed by the high command and opened by the local administrative authorities and the defence and security forces will help in determining the magnitude of these intolerable acts, which are in contracdiction with the respect of the rules of engagement on the one hand, and on the other hand, the protection of human rights, which constitute cardinal principles to which the elements of the defence and security forces are firmly bound.”
