Chief Baloum and eight others charged in Steve Diffo murder case

In Cameroon, Chief Baloum and eight other individuals implicated in the double murder of young men in the West region have been charged and sent to Dschang Central Prison.

New details have emerged in the case of the two young men burned alive at Baloum. On Thursday, June 25, Chief Baloum and eight other suspects in this affair were formally indicted and imprisoned at Dschang Central Prison. The lawyer for Steve Diffo's family confirmed that Chief Baloum and his co-accused face charges including murder, torture, complicity in murder and torture, and lack of a national identity card. "No human being, even one condemned to death by normative justice, should endure such a fate," the lawyer declared.

At the center of this tragedy are Bostel Kemta and Steve Achille Diffo Sijamo, both in their thirties. They were abducted, tortured, and burned alive on June 5 in Baloum, in Cameroon's West region, by a group of locals under the watch of village chief Charles Constant Pokam Noussi. Accused of involvement in the incident, Chief Noussi surrendered to authorities on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.

The families filed two complaints. The first was lodged at the Penka-Miche gendarmerie brigade, the district seat to which Baloum belongs, where the events occurred. The second complaint was submitted to the state prosecutor, who expressed surprise that he had not been informed of such grave offenses.

By Mariama Hamani — Analyst