The Yaoundé Military Tribunal has sentenced the prominent leader of Southern Cameroons, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides to life imprisonment for promoting separatism.

It’s the harshest sentence handed out ever since the Ambazonia struggle and quest for independence started many years ago. President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe an IT professor seen as a moderate within the Southern Cameroons Interim Government and his colleagues were kept in the court room till 6 am this morning following a so-called marathon trial that started yesterday the 19^th of August 2019 at exactly 11:30 am.

The French Cameroun military court also ordered the Ambazonia leader and 9 of his cabinet members to pay 250 billion FCFA to La Republique du Cameroun and an additional 12.5 billion cost for civil party.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was arrested in the Nigerian capital Abuja, along with 9 of his senior aides by a joint operation that included the Cameroonian and Nigerian secret servicemen and women. The Southern Cameroons leaders were transferred from Abuja to Yaoundé, capital of La Republique du Cameroun to face charges of organizing a separatist group.

During his detention, the Ambazonia Interim Government say, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was tortured, denied basic amenities for months and shackled for more than 75 days. The Southern Cameroons leader has long maintained that his goal was to build a Federal Republic of Ambazonia from the suffering and marginalized British Southern Cameroons minority population that was forced into a union with French Cameroun. Yaounde has always said Cameroon remains one and indivisible.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was denied access to lawyers for the first five months of his detention, rights groups say, and members of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) raided his home in Ewelle village in the Manyu County and killed members of his family.

By Sama Ernest