The press freedom group, Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned in the strongest term the sentencing of the Cameroonian journalist, Amadou Vamoulké, for twelve years jail term.

Vamoulké 47, is the former managing director of the state-owned Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV). He was recently sentenced for 12-years in jail and a 47 million FCFA (US$76,000) fines, after he was arrested nearly six years ago, for alleged embezzlement.

As of late 2022, he had been in court over 140 times, but the prosecution had yet to present any substantive evidence against him. Individuals close to Vamoulké assert that his independent-mindedness leading CRTV caused his arrest and detention.

CPJ in response to news reports that a special criminal court in Yaoundé Tuesday sentenced the long serving broadcaster, said the late-night conviction and sentencing of the journalist on retaliatory charges of embezzlement is a monumental travesty of justice and could be tantamount to a death sentence.

“Vamoulké is 72 and has already spent more than six years in arbitrary detention. Prosecutors must agree not to contest his appeal and given his age, failing health, and the overcrowded, unhygienic conditions at Kondengui Central Prison, immediately allow him to go home on bail,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, said in New York.

Vamoulké’s lawyer, Alice Nkom, confirmed to French news agency Agence France-Presse that her client would appeal.

She previously told CPJ that Vamoulké’s arrest was a reprisal for his management of CRTV.

“The official reason for his arrest is a pretext for trying to silence journalists in Cameroon … Amadou never accepted as black what he knew was white,” Nkom said.

Vamoulké was arrested on July 29, 2016 and is the longest-serving of five journalists currently imprisoned in Cameroon, according to CPJ’s annual prison census of jailed journalists as of December 1, 2022. The country is the third-worst jailer of journalists in Africa, after Egypt and Eritrea.