A high-profile South Sudanese political activist based in the United States has been charged with violating export controls for allegedly conspiring to send millions of dollars of weapons to his home country, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Dr. Peter Biar Ajak allegedly sought to send rifles, grenade launchers, Stinger missile systems, hand grenades and ammunition to South Sudan, the department said.
He was arrested alongside a fellow political activist, Abraham Chol Keech.
The defendants, Peter Biar Ajak of Maryland and Abraham Chol Keech of Utah, “sought to unlawfully smuggle heavy weapons and ammunition from the United States into South Sudan,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said.
South Sudan “is subject to a UN arms embargo due to the violence between armed groups, which has killed and displaced thousands,” he added.
According to the criminal complaint, between February 2023 and February 2024 the pair sought to illegally buy weapons from undercover law enforcement agents and smuggle them to South Sudan through a third country.
They allegedly tried to disguise an arms contract for nearly $4 million as a contract for humanitarian assistance.
Ajak and Akeech face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of violating the Arms Export Control Act and up to 20 years if convicted of violating the Export Control Reform Act.
Several South Sudan opposition sources have also confirmed to Radio Tamazuj that Dr. Peter Biar has been arrested by federal agents in Arizona.
Ajak, a 40 year-old Maryland resident, is an exiled South Sudanese opposition figure. A former World Bank economist and fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, he was granted refugee status in the United States last year.
In 2017, he founded the South Sudan Young Leaders Forum, an organization of emerging South Sudanese leaders committed to ending conflict and seeking to place the country on a path towards democracy and peace. But in 2020 he fled South Sudan “after being arbitrarily detained and possibly targeted for assassination,” according to his asylum petition lawyers at Paul Hastings.