Four Cameroonian soldiers have been sentenced to 10 years for their roles in the murder of two women and two children in 2018.
A fifth soldier received a two-year sentence.
The killings were captured on a video, which show the victims being led away, hooded and shot dead.
The government initially dismissed the footage as “fake news”.
But an investigation showed that the incident happened in a village in the far north of Cameroon close to the border with Nigeria.
In the video, which was circulated on social media in July 2018, a soldier could be seen walking alone down a dirt road with an automatic rifle strapped to his back. Seconds later, a group of soldiers and civilians follows, with a man – dressed in military fatigues and wearing aviator sunglasses – shown repeatedly striking a woman who clutches the hand of a young girl. Another soldier does the same to a second woman who had a toddler strapped to her back.
The soldiers could be heard accusing the women of involvement with Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group whose insurgency in neighbouring Nigeria had spread across the border.
The two were women were forced to kneel down while the little girl was blind folded with her own cloth.
Then the soldier started shooting, killing them in a hail of bullets. In all, analysts said 22 shots were fired.
The government initially denied the involvement of the army , dismissing the video as “fake news”.
After Amnesty International provided credible evidence, the authorities announced that the seven soldiers seen in the video had been arrested and would be prosecuted.
Two of the seven were acquitted.
The military court in the capital Yaounde handed down the murder verdict and sentences after the trial was adjourned several times.
The seven soldiers pleaded not guilty nearly a year ago.
The killings took place in Zeleved, Cameroon’s Far North region where troops have been deployed to fight Boko Haram terrorists carrying out cross-border attacks from Nigeria.
