Amnesty International has called on the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé to release Muslim scholar, Abdulkarim Ali, who has been detained without trial since August 11, 2023.

Marking the first year in detention for Abdulkarin Ali, who has reportedly been accused of inciting subversion of state power and having strong ties with the leaderships of the Southern Cameroons restoration groups, Karim said he was abducted and not arrested by Francophone army soldiers in Bamenda.

Cameroon Concord News understands Yaoundé reproached him for managing the human rights situation of the war in Southern Cameroons.

Karim has also been the defender of women’s rights ever since the beginning of the crisis in Southern Cameroons and was quoted recently as saying that many women are wailing and suffering as the war in Anglophone regions continues.

In December 2022, Amnesty International called for his release, observing that Mr. Karim was arrested for expressing his views.

“He was arrested only for exercising his right to freedom of expression,” Fabien Offner, Amnesty International’s researcher for West and Central Africa, said.

Anglophone lawyers who successively offered to defend him were previously rejected by the Francophone authorities in Bamenda. The National gendarmerie is also putting pressure on Mr. Karim’s family members particularly his mother to dissuade them from assisting him in detention.

By Fon Lawrence