By TALLA AGHAA CHRISTOPHER
About 11 detainees at the Old Town Police Station in Bamenda had been taken out to wash some military trucks under the guard of two gun-toting officers.
Shortly after, some security officers drove in with a truckload of suspects arrested following a security raid in Ntarinkon. As those freshly arrested were being led down the vehicle to their cell, some of them tried to escape and in the confusion, the detainees who were washing the trucks also fled.
A security source said among the escapees are some members of the outlawed Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, a secessionist grouping that seeks a review of the terms of the independence of the British Southern Cameroons in 1961. The SCNC was banned on January 17, 2017 by the then Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Rene Emmanuel Sadi.
The order banning the SCNC also banned the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium that was led at the time by Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Aforteka’a Neba.
The about six SCNC sympathisers were arrested on March 20, 2019 as they held a meeting in Bamenda. The meeting, security forces say, Swas to plan a protest against ongoing human rights violations that have characterised the crisis in Cameroon’s North West and South West Regions.
The SCNC activists arrested that fateful Wednesday included: Mohammed Sunusi Danjuma born on August 17, 1988 in Bamenda, Anye Piceva Achu born on January 11, 1982, Ngala Edward, Jephter Akum, Ayuk Nkongho and Babila Elvis.
After the escape, police are said to have raided the family home of Mohammed Sunusi Danjuma, traumatising his parents Ibrahim Danjuma and Madam Cheo Martha.
The family homes of
Anye Piceva Achu and Edward Ngala were also raided.
The whereabouts of the escapees remains in doubts as security forces step up their search. If caught, the SCNC suspects will be tried under the dreaded 2014 law on the suppression of acts of terrorism. They may be given the maximum sentence.