NSS report claims Machar plotted another coup to topple Kiir in 2016

JUBA – South Sudan’s National Security Service report released this morning is claiming that First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny had planned another coup in 2016 in an attempt to topple President Salva Kiir Mayardit from power returning the world’s youngest country to conflict.

This is after the intelligence agency claimed in the same report that the SPLM-IO leader and Vice President Taban Deng Gai planned a coup to topple Kiir in 2013 sparking the deadly conflict that has killed half a million people.

In the report, the NSS claimed that a “evidence from telephone intercepted communications from the same period reveal that Riek Machar as First Vice President of the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU) plotted a coup to seize power on 8 July 2016.”

The report claimed Machar “was presenting a unified front to the international community, in the background he was at the same time preparing forces of the SPLM/A-IO to carry out the coup and using support from a foreign government, the Republic of the Sudan, to provide his forces with the necessary arms and ammunition.”

“When the coup failed in its initial stages during his meeting with President Kiir and Second Vice President James Wanni Igga in the President’s office, Riek Machar never resumed the reconciliation talks that had been taking place between the leaders of the TGoNU,” the report added.

“Instead, he continued the conflict that caused great loss of life including the deaths of civilians, knowing from his experience over many years of conflicts in South Sudan and Sudan that such killings were inevitable.”