Cameroon : Big-time businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga arrested for murder of journalist Martinez Zogo

On Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023, arrests were made as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of jour­nal­ist Mar­tinez Zogo in Cameroon two weeks ago. The first is Mr. Jean-Pierre Amougou Belin­ga, an influ­en­tial businessman.

Busi­ness­man Jean-Pierre Amougou Belin­ga was arrest­ed at his home in Yaounde in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023, just before 6am. He was dragged out of bed and ordered to fol­low a strong team of arrest­ing police and gendarme.

Around the same time, anoth­er team was deployed at the home of one of his key col­lab­o­ra­tors, jour­nal­ist Bruno Bijan (direc­tor of media group Beringa).

Also sig­nif­i­cant is the arrest of Colonel Ray­mond Thomas Etoun­di Nsoe, a for­mer pres­i­den­tial com­man­der known as Jean-Pierre Amgou Beringa’s father-in-law.

All three are on tri­al in the for­mi­da­ble Sec­re­tari­at of Defense (SED), which has been at the cen­ter of the inves­ti­ga­tion since a joint police-mil­i­tary com­mis­sion of inquiry was set up.

In the after­noon, despite fam­i­ly resis­tance, the res­i­dence of Jean-Pierre Amougou Belin­ga and the head­quar­ters of the tele­vi­sion sta­tion Vision 4 were searched. The team is inter­est­ed in the con­tent of the call and mes­sage lists shared between these dif­fer­ent people.

The L’Anec­dote group, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belin­ga’s media empire, issued a state­ment Mon­day morn­ing in an attempt to down­play the sig­nif­i­cance of the busi­ness­man­’s arrest. “It’s ongo­ing,” he said, call­ing on his sup­port­ers to take a calm approach.

Jean-Pierre Amougou Belin­ga is often cit­ed in this case as a pos­si­ble cul­prit in the mur­der of jour­nal­ist Mar­tinez Zogo. The media mogul has always pri­vate­ly denied the accusations.