MEDICINS SANS FRONTIER STAFFS RELEASED
The LRC Kangaroo Court acquits alleged Amba fighter supporters
Undaunted just gathered that some five (medecins sans frontier)MSF workers accused of helping Amba Fighters have been acquitted by a LRC Kangaroo military tribunal the colonial French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) were acquitted a year after they were charged with assisting a suspected Ambazonian restoration fighter, MSF said on Friday. The ruling was handed down on December 29 but had not been made public, the NGO’s lawyer, Edouard Essono, told AFP.
“All five were given the benefit of the doubt and acquitted,” Essono added.
The incident occurred on December 27, 2021, when two local MSF employees were stopped at a traffic checkpoint in war ravaged Ambazonia where Ambazonian liberation fighters have been clashing with colonial LRC government security forces for the past six years and counting
The colonial LRC soldiers had discovered in their ambulance a man suffering from a bullet wound who MSF said needed “urgent care”.
The two were arrested and jailed in Buea, LGA, and two other LRC employees were detained later.
The colonial LRC authorities searched for a fifth MSF worker, an Indian national, but he managed to leave the country.
Of the five, two of whom were women, two were released on bail in May 2022, another in November, and the last on December 30.
“MSF has always defended the work of its staff and categorically denied any complicity with armed groups or stakeholders in any violent conflict,” the group said in a statement to AFP.
The NGO halted its operations in the southern zone of Ambazonia in July 2022 and did not say if these would resume after the acquittals.
The colonial LRC government suspended the charity’s work in neighbouring Northern zone of Ambazonia, in late 2020, accusing its medical teams of aiding and abetting armed freedom fighters.
Civilians have been the main victims of the fighting between Ambazonia independence restoration fighters and colonial LRC security forces in a senseless war that has claimed over 40,000 lives and counting.
More than 6,000 people have died and more than a million others forced from their homes since 2016, according to the International Crisis Group.
In February 2022, five MSF aid workers were kidnapped in Cameroon’s Far North region, which is regularly targeted by jihadist insurgents. They were released in March in neighbouring Nigeria.
The arrests were the latest of several challenges for MSF in the troubled country.
