Lapiro unleashes verbal missile on Biya

Says supreme court violated the law

In this open letter addressed to Biya, Supreme Court President, Alexis Dipanda Mouelle and the Cameroon public,  Lapiro, who some refer to as the “people’s lawyer”, proves that one does not need to hold a long pencil to read the law. And the Biya regime, which thought they were getting good riddance of one of their most virulent critics by allowing Lapiro to go on exile to the US, are suddenly gnashing their teeth: since his exile, he has multiplied vitriolic attacks against Biya and his administration through the media. Read and find out for yourself.

Gentlemen,

Let me use this letter to inform you that, within the framework of the appeal I made to the supreme court of Cameroon on my case concerning the hunger riots that occurred over the national territory in February 25 to 29, 2008 and for which I was found guilty of complicity by the Nkongsamba high court in Mungo division (a sentence which was later confirmed by the Littoral court of appeal in Douala) and sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment with hard labour, which I have already served in addition too paying 540,000 FCFA, as well as to damages of 280 million FCFA which I was still to pay, the supreme court of Cameroon announced its verdict on June 20, 2013.

This great court of the country, for reasons which do not surprise me, has violated section 510 and 527 of the criminal procedure code and by the same token, section 67 of Law No. 2006/016 of 29 December to determine the organisation and functioning of the supreme court, thus confirming the table of Cameroon justice and the glaring abuses of human rights going on in this country which I have recently condemned while speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Need I recall here that the Cameroon criminal procedure code and Law No. 2006/016 of 29 December on the organisation and functioning of the supreme court have all been deliberated and adopted by the Cameroon national assembly and promulgated by the president of the republic?

This is what the Cameroon criminal procedure code stipulates:

Section 510: Where the grounds of appeal filed by the parties or raised by the court of its own motion are founded, the Judicial Bench of the Supreme Court shall quash and annul the decision appealed against.

In this case, it shall examine and determine the matter on the merits.

Section 514:

(1) The President of the Supreme Court may, where he considers that a case is complicated, order that be heard in a plenary session of ail the sections of a Bench.

(2) The criminal section of the Judicial Bench of the Supreme Court, sitting with three members may, by majority decision, transfer a case to a plenary session of all the sections of the Bench.

Section 527:

(1) The Supreme Court may quash a decision in part or in whole.

(2) Where the whole judgment is quashed, the case and the parties shall be placed in the same position in which they were before the judgment so quashed was delivered. In this case, the Supreme Court shall examine and determine the whole matter on the merits.

Law No. 2006/016 of 29 December on the organisation and functioning of the supreme court stipulates:

Section 67: (1) The decision is made, either in seating or, after deliberation, on a given day within 2 weeks.

(2) When the bench quashes and annuls the decision appealed against, it hears and decides the matter if it can be heard on its merits, when the judges observe that the appropriate legal principle can be applied.

(3) If the appeal is not founded and there is no means of appealing on its own motion, the bench rejects the appeal.

(4) A copy of the cancellation decision is sent by the chief registrar of the bench to the ministry of justice and the competent chief registrar for recording in the registers of the jurisdiction from where the cancelled decision originated.

Gentlemen,

I admit that I am not a jurist but the criminal procedure code is sold even on the streets, therefore its contents are not a mystery to the accused man your system has transformed me into and to prove my innocence to the whole world, I felt obliged to buy one of these things, I call them a thing because you are the first to trample on your own laws written the code and, as such, no one should take the said code seriously.

Gentlemen,

Section 511 of the criminal procedure code stipulates that: (1) Before the supreme court hears an appeal on the merits, it shall ascertain whether the appeal has been properly filed.

(2) If it finds that certain formalities required by law have not been satisfied, it shall, as the case may be, deliver a judgment of inadmissibility.

(3) If the appeal is without merits, the court shall dismiss it.

Since the judges of the supreme court judged and annulled the sentence I appealed, my appeal can be said to have been grounded and judged receivable. The supreme court has thus violated sections 510 and 67 in that they did not make a substantive hearing, whereas, the matter can be judged, considering that the file it used to quash and annul the sentence appealed contains transcripts of court hearings with all the declarations of both parties and witnesses. The supreme court instead sends the matter back to the Nkongsamba high court when there is no legal disposition authorizing it to do so.

These magistrates who are staggering under the weight of age have, through loss of memory or intentionally, on your orders to cause a diversion, attempted to apply Section 515 of the criminal procedure code which stipulates that:

Where an appeal before the Supreme Court is based on the admissibility of the appeal before the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court quashes the judgment appealed against by declaring the appeal admissible, it shall remit the case to the same Court of Appeal which shall be differently constituted, for a decision to be taken on the merits.

It shall be likewise where the Court decides on an appeal against an interlocutory ruling.

Gentlemen,

I did not appeal to the supreme court on a matter of admissibility, much less on one of interlocutory hearing; what therefore is the section on which the supreme court is basing its decision to refer my case back to the Nkonsamba high court?

Having read the sections of Cameroon law cited above, what can an observer retain? Is it that the senile magistrates of Cameroon's supreme court do not know Cameroon’s laws or that you, Mr Biya, have ordered that it should be this way?

Is there anyone who can believe that my trial and those of Paul Eric Kingue are not a politically motivated trial remote controlled by you?

I call the Cameroon People to witness in this violation of my rights which is one of an uncountable series and denounce with all vehemence, the masquerade passing for justice in Cameroon but which is artfully controlled by you, Mr Biya, with the complicity of Alexis Dipanda Mouelle, so that all may know it.  And I cannot permit myself to keep quiet because the same masquerade is used against hundreds, even thousands of prisoners in Cameroon and because I am lucky to have a loud voice and people listen to me even outside Cameroon. I denounce this!!!

Buffalo, 3 July, 2013.