A popular Cameroon radio journalist who had been missing following what a media rights group called an abduction has been found dead, his employer and police said on Sunday.
Martinez Zogo was managing director of Yaounde-based private radio station Amplitude FM and the star host of a popular daily programme, Embouteillage (Gridlock).
On the air, the 51-year-old regularly tackled cases of corruption, not hesitating to question important personalities by name. He had been missing since Tuesday.
"I went to Ebogo (15 kilometres north of Yaounde) early this morning where I saw and recognised the body of Martinez Zogo. The prosecutor's deputy was present and his wife was there to identify him," Amplitude FM radio editor in chief Charly Tchouemou told AFP.
An anonymous police source verified Zogo's death to AFP.
A big crowd gathered as Zogo's body was transported to the mortuary of Yaounde Central Hospital for an autopsy.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned "the brutal abduction of a journalist" on social media in the aftermath of his disappearance.
According to RSF, Zogo's extensively damaged car was discovered outside a police station in a Yaounde suburb on Tuesday.
"There are many grey areas regarding the circumstances of his brutal abduction," Sadibou Marong, head of the sub-Saharan Africa office of RSF, told AFP.
"The authorities must launch a rigorous, thorough and independent investigation to establish the full chain of responsibility and the circumstances that led to this sad event," Marong said.
The national journalists' organisation in Cameroon denounced the "heinous assassination" and advised media employees to wear black on January 25 as a mark of sadness.
The International Press Institute, a Vienna-based press freedom organisation, asked Cameroonian authorities to "promptly investigate the heinous murder and ensure that those guilty are brought to justice".
The political opposition was equally angry, with Social Democratic Front (SDF) lawmaker Jean-Michel Nintcheu decrying a "crime which must go unpunished".
Several Cameroonian television networks dedicated their programming to Zogo's passing on Sunday.
Calixthe Beyala, a Cameroonian-French writer, claimed she was "devastated, grieved" by the news of his death.
"I knew he was dead as soon as it was announced that he was kidnapped," she told Info TV.
"We can ask ourselves the question: whose turn is it? Each of us can find ourselves in this situation for something that we might have said."