Mob justice blazes bright as police fiddle

YAOUNDE - It is 4.30am in Douala and a severely beaten man with his hands lashed behind his back lies on the road surrounded by an irate mob.

Blood oozes from his nostrils and ears as his tormentors place two tyres around his body.

"Bring me petrol!" a man barks from the crowd. A boy runs to a nearby station and returns with a litre of fuel.

Just as the man lifts his hand to light the matches, a police van screeches to a halt and the savage ritual stops. It is too late: the 23-year-old man is dead.

This is just one example of a wave of mob rule - known locally as jungle justice - that is sweeping Cameroon as the public grows angry with an ineffective and corrupt police force.

Residents of Bepanda say the dead man was with a gang of armed robbers who had broken into two homes, seized money and jewellery, and raped a woman after tying up her husband.

"Our intention was to set fire to that bastard so as to serve as a lesson to others," said one man. "We have had enough of them."

Such vigilante attacks are common across the nation. In May, villagers in Batibo stormed a gendarmerie station, pulled out two suspected armed robbers from a cell and lynched them in front of police.

The 2006 US State Department human rights report on Cameroon blames the sharp increase in mob justice on the absence of an effective criminal prosecution system.

In Kumba, 110km north of Douala, Manfred stands over the charred corpses of two men lynched for stealing. The mob placed tyres around their bodies and set them alight.

"It is too much. We have no sleep because of bandits. You can no more walk on the street in the dark ... they will beat and kill you," said Manfred, who declined to give his full name.

Asked why residents did not hand the alleged criminals over to the police, he laughed.

"Take them to the police? You are not serious, my man! As soon as you turn your back, the police will take money and free them, and before you know it they are drinking in the bar and threatening to deal with you."

Cameroon's police and judiciary are among the most corrupt institutions in the world, according to Berlin-based corruption watch Transparency International.

Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni has called on the justice minister and the human rights commission to educate people on fundamental rights, especially on the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial.

A criminal code integrating habeas corpus - the right to a court hearing to anyone who is arrested - was due to come into effect in August.

But the national assembly postponed its adoption until next January, saying the judicial police and magistrates needed more time to be schooled on the code.

- REUTERS