On the afternoon of November 21, 2018, at around 3:30 pm, unidentified individuals, armed and dressed in combat uniforms, invaded the front of the chapel in Kembon, a rural town located near Mamfé, aboard a vehicle. They opened fire deliberately and indiscriminately, killing Father Cosmas Ondore Oboto, a 33-year-old Kenyan national, vicar of the aforementioned chapel. In an intelligence report that young Africa You could consult, Joseph Beti Assomo, Minister Delegate to the Presidency in charge of Defense, states that the perpetrators of this crime acted on the orders of activist Eric Tataw Tano, exiled in the United States.
On September 5, 2023, the man presented as one of the main financiers of the English-speaking separatists was arrested in the United States. For facts that do not he has a priori it has nothing to do with the war that is raging in the Northwest and Southwest of Cameroon. Placed in preventive detention, Eric Tataw Tano must in fact answer before the Maryland courts for processes of embezzlement of Covid funds in the context of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), started in 2020 by the Donald Trump government. A bail request must be analyzed this Friday, September 8th.
Without visor
Could this be the beginning of the downfall of one of the most wanted men in Yaoundé in recent years? Well known to the Cameroonian special services, Eric Tataw Tano is also in the crosshairs of his country's judicial system. Cameroonian authorities consider him co-responsible for several homemade bomb attacks in Yaoundé, Douala or Ebolowa – with the separatist appealing shortly after the events of 2020 to increase attacks on Cameroonian soil.
He is also the subject of an arrest warrant – once again for his role in the civil war affecting the English-speaking regions of the Northwest and Southwest – and accused of contributing to the financing of terrorism. As such, it appears on a list of separatist leaders to be presented out of harm's way, drawn up by Martin Mbarga Nguélé's National Security Delegation in 2018 and transmitted to all Cameroonian diplomatic missions abroad, including the US.
Is this the reason for the recent legal setbacks of separatists on the other side of the Atlantic? While his arrest on September 5th does not appear to be linked to the Cameroonian case, Tataw Tano has seen an increase in complaints filed against him. he in the United States, in particular by the lawyer of Cameroonian origin Emmanuel Nsahlai, who voluntarily acts as Yaoundé's armed wing before the American courts. The aim of the latter? Convict Eric Tataw Tano for his participation in the Ambazonian separatist war.
Luxurious lifestyle
Between November and March 2022, five separatist leaders have already been sentenced in the United States to sentences ranging from 4 to 5 years in prison and a cumulative fine of at least 30 thousand dollars. [18 million CFA francs]. All are accused of illegally exporting firearms, ammunition and military equipment intended for separatist fighters, among others. Will Eric Tataw Tano be next, when his accounts risk being scrutinized by the American justice system?
In 2019, in collaboration with Dr. Ikome Sako, another separatist leader, Eric Tataw Tano raised 500 million CFA francs within the Cameroonian diaspora developed to the Ambazon secession. The mismanagement of this “war effort” was the cause of a dispute between the two men, with Sako and accuser Tataw Tano of having made the Anglophone crisis an object of business, abandoning the true meaning of the liberation struggle.
In the United States, Eric Tataw Tano is distinguished by a high lifestyle, attracting the attention of the powerful Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which launched investigations to determine the origins of his fortune. Does this come from “Ambazonian” funds? Or money diverted from the American federal program intended to combat Covid? In any case, the judicial vise is tightening around the separatist, to the great satisfaction of Emmanuel Nsahlai and in Yaoundé.
