The drama that has characterized the treason case against Sissiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and nine other Southern Cameroons leaders who were bundled from Nigeria in January 2017 will not end anytime soon.
Last week the NERA10 as they have come to be known were ordered to appear before the military tribunal despite an appeal by their counsel pending before the Supreme Court.
Well, the men who are all facing life jail in the refused to appear before the military court judge. But in their absence, the judge went ahead with the case.
This latest action by the military court is embarrassing to men of the legal profession.
The NERA10 counsel are clearly unhappy with what they say are signs that they will not get justice in the case.
Barrister Paddy Yong, is one of the senior advocates in the high-profile case. He spoke to Mua Kenneth in Yaounde.
Yes, as a matter of fact, the matter last came up on the 17 of May and we were informed because we had actually written to the court. We were informed that the matter had been adjourned by the court itself to the 1st of June.
So we were surprised when yesterday, at night, our clients were confronted with a production warrant that they had to be produced in court today when actually they were supposed to serve them a summons to appear in court and not through a production warrant; because when the case is adjourned, the law is very specific on that: serve the accused persons with a summons which must have the time, place and date which they have to appear in court.
The law actually goes ahead to say that; serve the accused persons five days ahead of the trial so that they could have an opportunity to inform their council and besides we had actually taken an interlocutory appeal to the court of appeal which the same scenario happen on the night of the 15th breaking 16th, the accused persons were confronted with a production warrant that they should be reproduced in the appeal court.
But we said NO, what are we going there to do, you actually have to serve us the summons and so they refused to go to court and when they went to court, some lawyers heard about it and went to the court of appeal and tried to explain that these people were actually served a production warrant on the night of the 15th and they needed time to get to their lawyers. They were not served a summons but a production warrant which is different from a summons and the court just went ahead to dismiss the case without the parties, saying it was irrecevable.
Whatever that means. So, we immediately filed an appeal to the supreme court and it is based on that appeal that this time around we wrote to the court saying that this time around this matter is coming up before the supreme court then we can come back.
You wrote to the military court?
We did. We wrote to the military court yesterday and served them. We were surprised that we were there today besides the letter we served to them, we were there today and they insisted that they were going on with the case.
You would understand that they are doing everything behind our backs.
They want to frustrate the lawyers from appearing in this case. That has been their intention but then, there are lots and lots of preliminary issues we need to even sort out before the trial can commence.
They know that and they are doing everything possible to frustrate us from raising those preliminary objections which are legal in law.
That is the position we find ourselves and honestly speaking I will tell you that the way the military court is going, their manner and approach, it shows very clearly that we didn’t go to that court thinking that we were going to have justice. We are not going to have justice in that court.
It is very clear. It is a charade. They actually want to make the world believe that this people have been tried but then those people as I can tell you are not going to have a fair hearing in that court.
I was actually going to ask you what the impact would be depending on the outcome at the supreme court.
We cannot say but we filed an appeal at the supreme court and we raised very legal arguments and we are hoping that the supreme court is going to rule in our favor.
If it does, fine. If it does not, then we have to come back to the military tribunal.
At this stage, the people cannot just pretend to continue with the trial because the judge that was originally handling the trial has been transferred.
So the present judge, the panel, they have to start de novo, identify the accused persons. Those are provisions of the criminal procedure code which they are violating.
The man, the new judge, the head of the panel that came last time told us already that he had read through the file and he had seen that there had been objections in the file and that the lawyers were hampering the matter from going on and that he was going to continue from where the judge that had been transferred had ended.
NO Sir! The law says that you must start the matter de novo. All he had to do was to come and start the matter afresh (de novo). Call the matter afresh and then identify the parties and we proceed in that manner.
A judge has to come to court with an open mind and then inform the court of the charges against the accused persons. You cannot come to court already having a cahier de charges.
It means that you came to court already loaded – NO. The evidence is supposed to actually come out in court and that is the procedure.
Are these the same issues you raised in your petition to the appeal court?
No. These are not actually the issues. At the time we raised just one preliminary issue. Just one because of the accused persons during the course of the notification said they were not Cameroonians. It is their right. They said they were not Cameroonians.
The Cameroon nationality code says that when once there is an issue of nationality being raised in a penal court, that court must quickly suspend proceedings and refer the matter back to the place of arrest of the accused persons.
It is not a doubt; the accused persons were all arrested in Abuja Nigeria. Therefore, what had to be done, the military tribunal had to suspend the proceedings and send the matter back for the issue of nationality to be resolved.
That is what the Cameroon nationality code says for that issue of nationality to be resolved before we can proceed. We raised the objection and the court first said they wanted evidence to show that the accused persons were refugees and asylum seekers.
We had that evidence presented before them to show that the accused persons were refugees and some of them were asylum seekers and the court said this evidence notwithstanding, they are going to go ahead to hear the matter and we said NO and filed an appeal because we said you cannot even determine the status of some of these people, only a civil court can determine the status of these people and the civil court of the place of residence or domicile of where the accused persons were arrested and where the accused persons were arrested was in Abuja, Nigeria.
Those are the issues we thought were going to be sorted out at this level before we can continue. Is this court competent enough? And again we were going to raise the issue of jurisdiction.
All of the accused persons are civilians. International jurisprudence says that you cannot try civilians in a military court.
So what are they doing there?
That is a wrong court for them. And we have a plethora of cases from the international tribunal to show that civilians cannot and should not be tried in a military tribunal. Those are some of the issues that we are looking forward to raise in the coming days.
LAW ON NATIONALITY
The nationality law in question is Law No 68/LF/3 of 11 June 1968 to setup the Cameroon nationality code.
Section 41 (i) states: the ordinary civil court shall have jurisdiction of disputes on the question of nationality. (ii) any such action shall be brought before the court of the domicile or failing that the residence of the person whose nationality is disputed according to the rules and procedures in force and the raising of Cameroon or foreign nationality and defense before any other court suspense further proceedings until decided in the ordinary civil court.