Cameroonian journalist Amadou Vamoulké sentenced to 12 years and US$76,000 fine

Committee to Protect Journalists | Dakar, December 21, 2022—In response to news reports that a special criminal court in Yaoundé Tuesday sentenced Amadou Vamoulké, the former managing director of the state-owned Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) broadcaster, to 12 years in prison and 47 million FCFA (US$76,000) in fines, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the sentence in this statement.

“Tuesday’s late-night conviction and sentencing of Cameroonian journalist Amadou Vamoulké on retaliatory charges of embezzlement is a monumental travesty of justice and could be tantamount to a death sentence,” Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, said in New York on Wednesday. “Vamoulké is 72 and has already spent more than six years in arbitrary detention. Prosecutors must agree not to contest his appeal and given his age, failing health, and the overcrowded, unhygienic conditions at Kondengui Central Prison, immediately allow him to go home on bail.”

Vamoulké’s lawyer, Alice Nkom, confirmed to French news agency Agence France-Presse that her client would appeal. She previously told CPJ that Vamoulké’s arrest was a reprisal for his management of CRTV. “The official reason for his arrest is a pretext for trying to silence journalists in Cameroon … Amadou never accepted as black what he knew was white,” Nkom said.

Vamoulké was arrested on July 29, 2016, and is the longest-serving of five journalists currently imprisoned in Cameroon, according to CPJ’s annual prison census of jailed journalists as of December 1, 2022. The country is the third-worst jailer of journalists in Africa, after Egypt and Eritrea.

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3 comments

  1. LRC is indeed a SH*THOLE country. The courts are kangaroo weapons misused by an evil dictator to silence his opponents.

    This dictator humiliated himself, his country and Africa when he went to the US.
    I feel really sorry for citizens of LRC for being held hostages by a LIVING CORPSE.

    Thank God Ambazonia is gone.

  2. Evsn a child in a kindergarten knows that Dictator Biya’s so-called ‘one and indivisible’ LRC i history. The last nail on the coffin of that FRAUD was the declaration of war- Dictator Biya FOOLISHLY and STUPIDLY declared a war that he could:

    NEVER EVER win
    NEVER EVER stop
    NEVER EVER control
    NEVER EVER financially sustain

    His dream of a BLITZKRIEG turned out to be an OPEN-ENDED war.

    Simply put, Dictator Biya FOOLISHLY and STUPIDLY destroyed the sh*thole VIVRE-ENSEMBLE and inadvertently created the newest country in the world called AMBAZONIA.

    BYE-BYE LRC, BAKASSI OIL HERE WE COME