Witnesses recognise S. Sudan soldiers accused of rape

July 4, 2017 (JUBA) – Two witnesses recognised four South Sudanese soldiers accused of raping expatriates and looting at a hotel located in the South Sudan capital, Juba at a court session held on Tuesday.

Witnesses Jesse Onyango and one Oduor identified the soldiers out of the 13 who were arraigned before the General Court Martial.

The court prosecutor had asked Onyango, a Kenyan national, who survived the 11 July, 2016 raid by suspected government soldiers, to identify if any of the soldiers standing in the dock participated in the attacked at the Terrain hotel.

He pointed out three of the soldiers.

“I saw them in the compound among the soldier when I was being taken to car parking yard by other soldiers,” Onyango said.

Oduor, the second witness to testify, identified a fourth soldier.

The court sitting, the forth since trial began last month, is conducted in public at the GCM offices in Geida Barracks south of Juba.

Members of press and several advocates and foreign diplomats attend every hearing. The attack on Terrain hotel led to death of a South Sudanese journalist who was targeted because of his Nuer ethnicity, a government commissioned committee reported.

Five foreign aid workers, including an American, were raped and the entire compound looted. Also, 26 vehicles and other items valued together valued $4.5 million by Terrain hotel management were lost.

During the trial, however, witnesses revealed horrible scenes during the hearing, including firing of bullets into their room by soldiers and recalled hearing voices of women pleading to be spared of rape.

“I was told to lie down by soldiers with my colleague and they were beating us and asking us to ‘bring dollars and car keys.’ I said I don’t have dollars and they fired a bullet in the ground just next to my head. I was so frightened. I thought they would kill me,” Onyango, who lost all belongings during the attack, told the GCM Tuesday.

The Kenyan national, who worked at the hotel as deputy manager, said he was later ordered out of the room and moved to the parking yard by soldiers, while they allegedly demanded keys to the car.

“As I was moving, the were firing bullets between my legs and near me from both sides. I just moved with my head down,” he said.

Onyango said he wanted to give his car to the soldiers, but the car had already been taken by the time he reached the parking lot. The soldiers, he said, returned him to the hotel rooms to help them identify owners of the cars, most them humanitarian aid workers.

“When we reached upstairs [were the expatriates were lodging], the rooms were all broken into and soldiers were all over the corridors. In one locked room, I heard a voice of a woman saying ‘please don’t rape me’,” the former hotel manager told the court on Tuesday.

He, however, told the defence lawyers that he could not identify soldier accused of raping the woman since the room was locked.

“I just heard the woman’s voice,” he explained.

Both witnesses clarified that they did not know if the soldiers were government troops or rebels, but they were later rescued by the National Security Service and taken to a government military post.

“We slept on the mattresses taken [by soldiers] from Terrain in the post and a soldier gave us whiskey in the morning which we took together,” Onyango recalled, throwing the court into murmurs. He alleged the whiskey was taken by soldiers from the Terrain Hotel bar.

Peter Malual, the lead defense lawyer, told court that the accused soldiers cannot be held responsible due to the lack of evidence. However, the public prosecutor, Lt Col. Mayiel argued that the account of events given by the witnesses presented and other investigations carried out by government were sufficient evidences.

DEATH CERTIFICATE QUESTIONED

A Juba Teaching Hospital doctor who signed the death certificate also testified under oath. Dr. Maker Isaac said the deceased journalist’s body wasn’t examined by the hospital, but the certificate was issued after International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that death was caused by gunshots during the July 2016 fighting.

He said many bodies were brought to the hospital and the health facility did not examine individual case due to high casualties and the fragile security situation at the time.

The defence lawyers said the hospital’s failure to confirm gunshots as cause of death and failure to carry out postmortems was reasonable enough to dismiss the death certificate as insufficient.

Meanwhile, the next court hearing scheduled for 6, July.

(ST)