A priest’s health deteriorates under detention in S. Sudan: Amnesty

May 14, 2016 (JUBA) – A pastor who has been under arbitrary detention by the South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) is facing health deterioration.

Christopher Gwagbwe, was arrested two years go by President Salva Kiir’s security operatives. No charges have been presented in court for his arrest. Other 33 men, all of whom are from the Equatoria region, have been suffering under detention by NSS. No trial in court has been conducted.

Human rights bodies including Amnesty International and Urgent Action have issued a statement, renewing their call to the government to free the detained citizens of the nation, with urgent emphasis on the deteriorating health situation of the church priest.

“As an update to our Urgent Action on the 33 men who remain in arbitrary detention at the National Security Service (NSS) headquarters in the Jebel neighbourhood of Juba, one of the men is Christopher Gwagbwe, an Episcopal priest in his sixties affiliated with the Charismatic Episcopal Church,’ partly reads the statement.

“His health is deteriorating in poor conditions of detention and he has been denied family visits since November 2015,” it said.

Gwagbwe was arrested in September 2014 at his home in Juba for unknown reasons.

The priest has high blood pressure while the conditions of detention are poor, including a lack of adequate ventilation and poor diet, and his health has been deteriorating.

The NSS has neither charged Gwagbwe with any offence nor presented him in court. Though family members were initially allowed to visit him in the past, since November 2015, NSS officers have repeatedly denied him family visits.

(ST)