SPLM-IO says student wing leader arrested by security forces

JUBA – South Sudan’s main armed opposition, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-In-Opposition (SPLM-IO), said on Thursday that its students wing secretary-general, Gattuor Kier, was arrested on Sunday by members of the National Security Service (NSS) after a church service.

Gattiek Gatkuoth Wichar, the SPLM-IO Youth League spokesman and head of the National Committee for Information and Public Relations, told Sudans Post in a statement that unidentified NSS officers took Kier into custody, and his current whereabouts are unknown.

“Cde. Gattuor Kier, the Secretary General of the SPLM (IO) Students League, was arrested on Sunday after church service. He was arrested by unidentified officers believed to be from National Security Service,” Gattiek said.

“He was taken to an unknown location and his whereabout remains mysterious so far,” the opposition official added.

Gattiek said his group believes the arrest is linked to Kier’s refusal to align with Stephen Par Kuol, South Sudan’s peacebuilding minister and a suspended member of the main armed opposition group.

“We suspect that his arrest is related to the fact that he hadn’t linked himself with the suspended members of the party, who have illegally formed an interim leadership of the SPLM (IO) and claimed to have replaced Comrade Chairman H.E. Dr. Riek Machar because of his current predicament,” he said.

Kuol declared himself the interim chairman of the SPLM-IO following the March arrest of its leader, Riek Machar, and leads a faction that SPLM-IO officials consider illegal. The opposition group contends that Kier’s opposition to this faction led to his detention.

The detentions of opposition officials began after hostilities broke out between a local youth group linked to the SPLA-IO and the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF) in Nasir County of Upper Nile state.

Following these clashes, the SPLM-IO leadership, including Machar, faced arrests and harassment by government forces.

Gattiek further condemned Kier’s arrest as arbitrary and demanded his immediate release by the security apparatus.

“Such elements are hunting cadres of the party, who haven’t endorsed their declaration in Juba. The SPLM (IO) Youth League condemns his arbitrarily arrest and demands the security apparatus to release him,” Gattiek added.