The family of Dong Samuel Luak, the SPLM-IO official who was abducted in Kenya last year, appealed to President Salva Kiir to release him as part of the peace agreement.
Human rights advocate Dong Samuel Luak and Aggrey Idri Izbon, both senior members of South Sudan’s armed opposition group led by Riek Machar, went missing from the Kenyan capital Nairobi in January 2017.
Retired South African colonel William Endley, who was released from prison in Juba, told Voice of America’s South Sudan in Focus programme last week that he saw Aggrey Idri Izbon in the National Security Service Headquarters last year.
His sister Nunu Samuel Luak appealed through Radio Tamazuj for the government of South Sudan to reveal the fate of her brother, saying that his continued incarceration without charge after the signed peace agreement is a “farce.”
“We are appealing to the president to release Dong because he is the leader of the country. Even if he is not the one who detained him, but he has powers to order his release,” she said.
“The South African man has revealed that Dong and Aggrey were seen at the Blue House in Juba, so the government knows the whereabouts of Dong,” she added.
Earlier this year, the international rights group Amnesty International said it received credible information that the two opposition officials were removed from Blue House in Juba on the night of 27 January 2017.
On 1 October, the president’s spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, told Radio Tamazuj that all political detainees had been released.
On 31 October, President Kiir ordered the immediate release of James Gatdet and William Endley during his speech at the peace ceremony in the capital Juba.