Thieving BIR soldiers ‘sting’ CCC Bank,steal millions in cash

Some elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion, popularly known by its French acronym as BIR, are reported to have broken into the Community Credit Company, CCC Bank in Batibo town at about 2 am on Thursday July 17 and shattered the safe containing millions of francs CFA.

By his own account, one of the Board of Directors of CCC Bank, Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam, lived the burglary. He said on the night it was carried out, he was in Batibo, his native village.

He told The Post that when the night watchman and neighbours heard loud noises as the thieving soldiers were chiseling the metal protectors of the bank door, they alerted him and he immediately called the State Counsel of the area.

The State Counsel in turn mobilised gendarmes and police who, unfortunately arrived the scene just after the night robbers had done their worst and taken off.

The Batibo gendarmes naturally alerted their colleagues of Bali, Widikum and Mbengwi to intercept every car from Batibo that night.

"As the forces were alerted and they started searching everywhere, our local boys who turned out that night waylaid in nearby bushes and as I was going round with the Gendarmerie Commandant, we discovered that the thieves drove off in a ‘Rav 4’ car that was parked in front of the palace, not far from the bank.

A little distance away, there was a bike that had apparently transported some of them, parked beside a bush.

It was when one of those thieves whose names we are keeping, emerged from the bush, thinking that as places where calm, he could now mount his bike and take off. There and then, our boys warned him not to move an inch.

“He told them that though he is in sportswear, he is a soldier and that they should not open fire nor harm him in any way, because he is just returning from the house of a female friend where he had gone for a quickie.

Luckily, we arrived the scene with the Commandant and in french, I lured him to jump into our car for ‘safety’ and we started interrogating him and that is when he revealed that they actually came from Mamfe where they work and broke into the CCC bank in Batibo, and unfortunately for him his friends vamoosed with the booty leaving him behind. He was coming back to collect his bike only to discover the population had seized the bike."

Hon Mbah Ndam, said that the car that the suspect bandits used was later abandoned far off, near a water catchment in the outskirts of Batibo where the bandits discovered that that was the end of the road.

Inside the car were found uniforms of BIR soldiers and heavy weapons that had apparently been used in destroying the safe of the bank.

The ‘RAV 4’ was pulled to Batibo Gendarmerie Brigade and on Friday July 18, one of the BIRs was arrested in Widikum and taken to Batibo.

Hon Mbah Ndam said in order to ensure that these thieving soldiers turned armed robbers, should not overpower the few elements at the Gendarmerie Brigade, they decided that they be transferred to the Gendarmerie Legion in Bamenda where investigations will continue because six of the them are at large.

According to Mbah Ndam, the population that turned out at the Batibo Gendarmerie Brigade were of the opinion that the two armed robbers be burnt alive.

"As a man of law, I pleaded with them not to employ jungle justice but they stood their grounds; that was why we called for redeployment of two truck loads of gendarmes from Bamenda because the atmosphere kept changing for the worse.

Thank God they have been taken to Bamenda. And we are bent to see that these thieving soldiers are prosecuted."