South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir returned to Juba from Khartoum on Wednesday morning after talks the previous day with his Sudanese counterpart Omer Hassan al-Bashir.
Kiir’s visit was initially scheduled to last only a few hours, but he extended it to a full day, overnighting in Khartoum, after falling while boarding his aircraft on Tuesday afternoon.
The president had finished his talks in Khartoum and was climbing the stairs to his airplane at Khartoum Airport in preparation for his return to Juba when he fell, according to witnesses.
It was not clear what caused the fall, though some witnesses said he had appeared exhausted, while others downplayed the fall as a mere stumble.
Afterwards he was seen being helped onto the aircraft by aides, before disembarking again and getting into a car to head back into Khartoum. The South Sudanese embassy later announced that he spent the night at the Corinthia Hotel.
Sudanese and South Sudanese officials offered two different reasons for why the president’s return to Juba was delayed. Some officials said the reason for the delay was an aircraft problem while others said the reason was that the president’s meetings ran longer than expected.
Ambassador Mutrif Siddig, Sudan’s envoy to South Sudan, stressed that Kiir was in good health and blamed aircraft fault for his delayed return to Juba. Likewise, the South Sudanese embassy in Khartoum announced that there was a problem with the president’s jet, stressing that Kiir was in good health.
Foreign Ministers Barnaba Marial Benjamin, speaking to reporters at Juba Airport on Wednesday said, “Of course, the president could not come back as promised yesterday because the meetings continued for a long time.”
“And since you know here in Juba usually it is evening and our airport here does not open 24 hours like that in Khartoum, so people thought that it was not advisable to leave and come here when it is dark. That’s why the president and the delegation spent the night in Khartoum.”
He mentioned also the reported “technical fault” but said this was not “really” the reason why the return flight was postponed until Wednesday.
“For the plane of course there was a small technical fault in the plane which was later on corrected, but really people spent the night there because of the time factor. So any other rumours… are not true,” said the South Sudanese foreign minister.
Sudan’s state news agency (SUNA) offered a report corroborating Barnaba’s account, announcing that Kiir would meet Tuesday evening at Corinthia Hotel with the country’s vice president Bakri Hassan Saleh.
This announcement was made after Kiir fell and was taken toward the Corinthia Hotel.
Neither SUNA nor Barnaba explained why the president already had gone to the airport and was boarding his aircraft if he still had unfinished business with the Sudanese vice president.
A third narrative was offered by Kiir’s own spokesman Ateny Wek, who acknowledged that the president “slipped” but denied that this caused the delay in Kiir’s return.
“He was getting up on the plane stairs and he slipped on one of the stairs,” Ateny told Reuters news agency, adding that security guards supported him. “After slipping, he boarded the plane and the plane failed to take off due to mechanical problems.”
Photographers and television journalists who were filming the president’s departure were forced by Sudanese security to delete recordings of the fall immediately and newspaper journalists were ordered not to publish about the incident in their papers.
Kiir was accompanied by his Defense Minister Kuol Manyang, his Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial, and other senior officials and aides.
In July 2010 Salva Kiir went to Kenya for medical check-ups for “exhaustion”, according to then-Cabinet Affairs Minister Kosti Manibe, and again in November 2013 took a short leave for a medical check-up in Kenya after suffering from exhaustion, according to a presidential aide.
Related:
S. Sudan’s Kiir collapses on visit to Sudan (4 Nov.)