Martinez Zogo murder inquiry turns into political drama

The naked and lifeless body of radio journalist Martinez Zogo was discovered a year ago on the outskirts of Cameroon's capital, Yaounde.

A group of hooded men abducted the well-known media personality five days earlier after Zogo left the privately-owned radio station Amplitude FM, which he headed. The 50-year-old journalist was known throughout the country for his vocal criticism of Cameroon's powerful elites.

Zogo's body showed signs of torture, including severed fingers and a twisted tongue. He had apparently been sodomized with a stick and had been subjected to electric shocks, according to reports by press freedom organizations, including Reporters without Borders (RSF).

The investigation into the violent death, however, has been anything but straightforward, with those charged with various levels of complicity in the murder being the same powers that Zogo tried tirelessly to bring down.

Cameroonian justice: torture without murder

According to the AFP news agency, there are sixteen suspects in custody in connection with the events. However, they have only been charged with "complicity in torture" to date.

"Here are the sticking points: we don't know if Martinez was murdered. We know he was tortured, but we don't know by whom," says Calvin Job, the lawyer representing Zogo's family.

"We don't know what's going on in the investigation," he told DW, despite the fact that "it's been a year" since the gruesome discovery of his disfigured body.

Among those in custody under torture charges are several commando members from Cameroon's intelligence services — the General Directorate for External Investigations, or DGRE. One detained suspect, DGRE special operations director Justin Danwe, has reportedly confessed to leading a commando team tasked with kidnapping and torturing the journalist.

RSF conducts own inquiry into murder

Danwe and other commando members have denied, however, that the unit killed Zogo according to a investigation published by RSF on the one-year anniversary of Zogo's killing. 

Other DGRE officials implicated include the director general of the organization, Leopold Maxime Eko Eko, who is also in pre-trial detention.

Local media tycoon Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga has also been linked to the events; Danwe accuses the powerful player of being the mastermind behind the abduction. 

Both Belinga and Eko Eko deny their involvement

An explosive dossier

For years, Zogo was the star host of the daily radio show Embouteillage, which translates as "gridlock" in English. He had repeatedly used the program as a platform to vociferously accuse Belinga of wide-scale embezzlement of public funds.

Zogo went as far as claiming that he had a dossier showing payments from government coffers straight into to Belinga's pockets.

The dossier, which Zogo had circulated to many government departments and other journalists the month before his killing, includes print outs of government bank transactions, bank slips and tables of government payments to Belinga’s companies — to the tune of $79 million (€72 million) over a span of ten years.

To make matters worse for Belinga, Zogo circulated the document among numerous government departments as well as to other journalists during the month before his death.

"Are you going to let state coffers be robbed … by bandits?" Zogo asked listeners on his program on the day of his abduction. "No, my brothers, wake up, the situation is critical."

'Proxy wars'

The murder is likely related to political dynasties in the making, says Aristide Mono, a Cameroonian political analyst who worked closely with Zogo.

"We're convinced that Martinez Zogo was liquidated as part of these clashes between the different clans positioning themselves to assume [Cameroonian President] Paul Biya's legacy," he told DW.

"We're talking about proxy wars. These are not choirboys."

The narrative of Zogo's killing has meanwhile given rise to a series of theories and conspiracy narratives, which may highlight just how little stability Cameroonians see in their political future — especially amid declining press freedom: Some people now say they believe that the murder served as a way to effectively sideline Belinga, who was one of those jostling to succeed aging President Biya. 

The autocrat, who has ruled the central African nation with an iron fist for 41 years, turns 91 next month — without any clear succession.

Contradictions impeding progress

Meanwhile, the head of RSF's Investigations Desk, Arnaud Froger, says that the charges of torture against Belinga and members of DGRE are filled with "contradictions."

Froger highlights inconsistencies "between members of the commando trying to limit their responsibility to the beating of the journalist, other statements affirming that there was a desire to kill the journalist, and the autopsy reports establishing that Martinez Zogo could not have escaped alive from the abuse inflicted on him."

While Froger praised the initial inquiry for the "colossal amount" of work it had to do during the first year of the case, he told DW that there remain a "lot of unanswered questions." These include the failure to formally identify the scene of the crime, pin down the roles of those presumably involved,and analyze phone data.

"For now, there is very little in the way of telephone evidence, which is a basic requirement in criminal matters to know who was in contact with whom and who was where," Froger said.

Rumors hanging over investigation

In December, Cameroon appointed a new investigating judge to head the military court overseeing the case — the third such appointment in ten months since Zogo's killing.

His predecessor had reportedly ordered Belinga and Eko Eko's release from detention, which Froger referred to as an "extraordinary development" that showed "the enormous pressure being exerted on this case, and the obstacles preventing this journalist's murder from being solved."

Rumors and counter-claims swirl around the case. One is that a second team took over after the first commando unit had tortured Zogo, and that this team killed the journalist, something that according to RSF was raised during interrogations.

Froger says that the facts to support this line of inquiry were "pretty weak at the moment" but stressed that "there are still a lot of shadows" hanging over the investigation.

Hope — despite everything

With many aspects of the case still in need of clarification and further investigation, Zogo's family has yet to find a semblance of closure. 

Zogo's remains have not been returned to his family a year later, with his body still in the morgue in the event of a new autopsy. Zogo's wife Diane said that as long as the investigation is pending, "we can't talk about a funeral."

Despite the investigative lags, she continues to believe "justice will be done."

"So I trust that the government and the military tribunal will find my husband's killers," she told DW.

Paul Chouta and Sandrine Blanchard contributed to this article.

Edited by: Sertan Sanderson