JUBA – South Sudan’s First Vice President Taban Deng Gai has denied a US suggestion that he killed two prominent government critics who were arrested and deported from Kenya in late 2017.
Dong Samuel Luak, a prominent human rights activist, and Agri Idri Izbon, a member of the SPLM-IO led by Machar were arrested in Kenya in November 2017 and were deported to South Sudan.
The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said in a report last year that the two men were deported then killed with orders from senior South Sudan government officials.
This month, the United States charged Taban Deng Gai of being complicit in and having directly or indirectly engaged in serious human rights abuses, including the abduction and killing of lawyer Samuel Dong Luak and SPLM-IO member Aggrey Idry.
The two men, who were sympathetic to SPLM-IO, disappeared off the street of Nairobi on January 23 and 24, 2017.
Mr. Taban said the Kenyan government should instead be held responsible for the disappearance of Dong Samuel and Aggrey Idry.
“I swear before you that I have no any hands in what happened to Dong Samuel and Agerry Iddri, and very soon what I am saying will come to light,” the First Vice President said while addressing a wedding gathering on Saturday.
“I will be one of those people who will be asking the Kenyan government where these people are because they disappeared in Kenya. If any Kenyan citizen disappeared in South Sudan we will be held responsible because we are a sovereign country,”
Last month, the U.S also sanctioned five South Sudanese individuals who it said were also involved in the disappearance and reported deaths of Dong and Aggrey.
The US. identified Abud Stephen Thiongkol, Malual Dhal Muorwel, Michael Kuajien, John Top Lam, and Angelo Kuot Garang as agents of the internal and external security services in South Sudan.
“It won’t take long before you know Taban Deng has no hand in this issue. I am one of those people who still believe that these people will appear somewhere else, because they disappeared in Kenya. Kenya has a legitimate government, one day Kenyan government will tell us where they are,” he added.
According to a UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan, Dong and Idri were executed by Internal Security Bureau agents at a Luri National Security facility three days after they were deported to Juba.
