President Biya critic jailed for 25 years

Amnesty International has condemned the decision of a military court in Cameroon to sentence an opposition leader to 25 years in prison. Aboubakar Siddiki was arrested in 2014, accused of plotting to destabilise President Paul Biya’s government. He is “the latest victim of the Cameroonian authorities’ strangling of opposition voices”, the UK-based human rights group […]

Amnesty International has condemned the decision of a military court in Cameroon to sentence an opposition leader to 25 years in prison.

Aboubakar Siddiki was arrested in 2014, accused of plotting to destabilise President Paul Biya’s government.

He is “the latest victim of the Cameroonian authorities’ strangling of opposition voices”, the UK-based human rights group said.

No credible evidence was presented to the court to convict him, it added.

Mr Siddiki is the leader of Cameroon’s Patriotic Salvation Movement – a small opposition party in the country’s northernmost region.

He was convicted of hostility against the homeland, trying to instigate a revolution and contempt of the president.

“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.