Operation Sparrowhawk: Mendo Ze still in prison after six months

On Monday, the judge Annie Noëlle Bahounoui extended the detention of the former General Manager of CRTV.

He was present at the Special Criminal Court (TCS) on Monday, May 11, 2015, at 11am, donning a sky blue suit covering a white shirt "Mao collar."

Led by a strong joint police escort and prison guards, the former general manager of CRTV and his lawyer, Mr. Atangana Ayissi went to meet the judge, Annie Noëlle Bahounoui, conducting the criminal investigation since opening the judicial proceedings against the former DG. The magistrate extended by six months the remand mandate of the former Minister for Communication.

Incarcerated on 12 May 2014 in the Central Prison in Yaoundé Kondegui, hours after his arrest, remand (it's six months, renewable once, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, Editor's note) Prof. Gervais Mendo Ze's remand yesterday, 12 May, 2015.

The judge who has not completed the investigation (the time allowed by law is six months) after three hearings in question and state inspectors of Higher State Control decided to maintain the associate professor of linguistics in prison.

So six months has passed and Gervais Mendo Ze is in Kondengui prison, where he shares his daily life with Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara his cellmate. In December 2014, the choir master organized a concert of religious music with prominent choir, the Voice of the Coterie which he is the founder.

In April, around Urbain Olanguena Awono of Inoni Ephraim, Jean Baptiste Nguini Effa and other prisoners of Operation Sparrowhawk, were committed at a conference on the theme of betrayal. In his remarks for the occasion, the speaker then said:

"We must avoid seeking at all costs to become a great man if you do not have the means to take people to barter objects, to get intelligence with the wicked people to attempt the life of others, the double game of delivering others outside." And Professor Mendo Ze indicated at this conference: "We are in prison but our minds are not on hold."

Arrested on May 12, 2014, Professor Gervais Mendo Ze is suspected of embezzlement of more than one billion FCFA, money from the license fee of CRTV. A charge to which he responds by coercion with Paul Amang Betene and Pascal Manga, two former officials of the Ministry of Finance and Amadou Vamoulké, current General Manager of CRTV. This has already been heard twice before the examining judge in the case Mendo Ze.