{"id":367068,"date":"2017-10-31T15:35:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=367068"},"modified":"2017-10-31T15:35:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:35:33","slug":"cameroon-jails-president-biya-critic-for-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/10\/cameroon-jails-president-biya-critic-for-25-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameroon jails President Biya critic for 25 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
Amnesty International has condemned the decision of a military court in Cameroon to sentence an opposition leader to 25 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Aboubakar Siddiki was arrested in 2014, accused of plotting to destabilise President Paul Biya’s government.<\/p>\n
He is “the latest victim of the Cameroonian authorities’ strangling of opposition voices”, the UK-based human rights group said.<\/p>\n
No credible evidence was presented to the court to convict him, it added.<\/p>\n
Mr Biya, 84, has been in power since 1982, and his critics accuse him of being authoritarian.<\/p>\n
Mr Siddiki is the leader of Cameroon’s Patriotic Salvation Movement – a small opposition party in the country’s northernmost region.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of hostility against the homeland, trying to instigate a revolution and contempt of the president.<\/p>\n
“We are going to appeal this decision, which does not seem to us to be at all just,” Reuters news agency reports Mr Siddiki’s lawyer, Emmanuel Simh, as saying.<\/p>\n
Mr Siddiki was arrested along with lawyer Abdoulaye Harissou – and they have both been in detention since August 2014.<\/p>\n
The military tribunal sentenced Mr Harissou to three years in prison for failing to disclose information that could harm national security.<\/p>\n
But charges were dropped against three journalists – F\u00e9lix Cyriaque Ebol\u00e9 Bola, Baba Wam\u00e9 and Rodrigue Tongu\u00e9 – also arrested in connection with the same case.<\/p>\n