Cameroon’s President Paul Biya on Wednesday signed a decree commuting and remitting sentences for some prisoners across the country; a move likely to decongest the Central African country’s overcrowded prisons.
In the decree, President Biya inter alia converted death sentences to life imprisonment and life sentences to 25 years in jail.
He said minors who have been sentenced shall benefit from one-third of the remission.
The decree excludes some leaders of the Anglophone separatist movement jailed on charges including terrorism and some former state officials in jail for pilfering state funds.
This is because commutations and remissions do not apply to those imprisoned for such crimes.
The measure will drastically reduce the prison terms of some detainees and grant outright freedom to others.
It was not immediately feasible to determine how many detainees would walk out of their dungeons as a result of the clemency, which the Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals was tasked with implementing.
Although the long serving president did not give reasons for the move, it comes amidst a global struggle to curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus and pressure from rights groups for the country to decongest its detention centers.
Cameroon counted 855 confirmed cases of the virus on Wednesday, including 17 deaths and 165 recoveries, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rights activists had argued that for the country to effectively fight the spread of Covid-19, its overcrowded prisons needed to be decongested.
Ms Ilaria Allegrozzi, Senior Central Africa Researcher at the Human Rights Watch, said earlier that keeping social distance, practicing self-isolation and taking basic measures such as hand washing were impossible in Cameroon’s prisons.
According to the rights advocate, the central prison in the capital currently holds about 5,000 people – five times its capacity – the majority of whom are in pretrial detention.
Other prisons are no better. The prison in Maroua, in the Far North region where jihadist group Boko Haram has repeatedly carried out attacks, currently houses more than 1,470 yet it was built to accommodate 350.
In the Southwest, one of two English speaking regions of the country hit by a deadly separatist conflict, the Central Prison in Buea, built for 700 people currently holds over 2,000 – still with the majority in pretrial detention.
It is expected that these prisons will be decongested when the presidential decree is fully implemented.
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