A Federal Grande has accused a man of Maryland for charges of making threatening communications to kidnap and hurt the citizens of Cameroon and provide material support to separatist groups, federal prosecutors announced on Friday.
Eric Tataw, 38, of Gaithersburg, who supposedly refers to himself as the “Garri teacher” in a term that coined referring to mutilation, ordered the violent groups to murder, kidnap and mutilate themselves in support of the separatist combatants of violence they use against the Camerounian government, the prosecutors said.
Tataw, a Cameroonian citizen, surrendered and was ready to make his initial appearance in court on Friday, the department said.
“It is alleged that the defendant ordered horrible acts of violence, including the limbs of separation, against Cameroonian civilians in support of a violent secessionist movement,” said Matthew Galeotti, head of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, in the statement.
Tataw allegedly referred to dismemberment as “Garriing”, using the phrase “small Garri” for smaller appendages and “large Garri” by limbs or murder, prosecutors said.
He supposedly referred to himself as Garri’s “teacher.”
The separatist combatants, called “Boys amba Boys”, are asking that the regions of the Northwest and Southwest form a new country called “Ambazonia,” prosecutors said. The strategies of AMBA’s children include attacking the Cameronian military and civilians in the efforts to press the government to allow the regions to separate.
Violence in the western regions of Cameroon caused in 2016, when French -speaking judges and teachers were sent to English -speaking regions, generating Anglophone manifestations and protests that Francophones tried to reduce their political and cultural importance, according to the United States Refugee and Immigrant Committee.
Cameroon inherited two legal systems: English customary law and French civil law, after the colonial government divided in the early twentieth century.
When the military forces violently broke the protests in 2016, the current “Anglophone crisis” began.
The accusation alleges that Tataw began raising funds in April 2018 to finance the attacks of Ampa’s children in Western regions.
The prosecutors said that Tataw, with great monitoring of social networks, wrote hundreds of publications on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter asking civil attacks and watching funds to assemble the boys of AMBA.
The positions regularly received tens of thousands of points of view, and the Boys AMBA, and Tataw supposedly ordered other third parties to circulate the posts, the department said.
“From September 2018 to December 2020, Tataw and its conspirators raised more than $ 110,000,” said the statement. “Tataw and co-conspirators transferred parts of these funds, either directly or through intermediaries, to the children of AMBA located in Cameroon and neighboring Nigeria.”
Any alleged co-conspirators was not appointed in the statement.
The “National Campaign of AK” sought to build each child AMBA with an AK-47 rifle in Cameroon, the department said. Prosecutors said the funds provided explosive materials and explosive items for forced locks or orders of “ghost city.”
It is alleged that Tataw communicated directly with the leaders of AMBA Boy, taking personal credit for the murders and kidnappings of the group, according to the statement.
Tataw allegedly threatened and attacked people who believed they cooperated with the Cameroonian government, as municipal officials and traditional bosses, according to the statement. Cameroon Development Corporation employees, a public company that grows, processes and sells products such as bananas and rubber, were also objective, prosecutors said.
Tataw also requested public, educational and cultural properties to be destroyed, according to the statement.
“Tataw and his co-conspirators mastered and financially supported a vicious scheme to overthrow a foreign government,” said US fiscal prosecutor Kelly O. Hayes for the Maryland district in the statement. “They resorted to an unthinkable level of violence while instilling fear of innocent victims to advance their political agenda.”
Tataw is accused of four interstate communication positions of a threat of damage and a conspiracy charge to provide material support.
If it is convicted, you could face a maximum fine of five years in each communication position of threat to damage, and up to 15 years in the material support count.
