August 26, 2020 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s national security service is detaining a lawyer for allegedly criticizing economic policies of the government, several sources with direct knowledge have said.
Kuoch Malek Deng Malek, an advocate working for Yom Yom & Co. advocate, a law firm in the country’s capital Juba, was arrested after he was summoned to the National Security Service (NSS) headquarters in Juba on Tuesday.
“Lawyer Kuoch Malek Deng Malek has been arrested by the National Security. He was arrested on Tuesday. He was called into the Blue House by the NSS agents and he never returned since then,” one colleague of the detained lawyer told Nyamilepedia from Juba this afternoon.
Another source said he is not aware of why he was arrested and that he might have been arrested for something that he wrote on his social media Facebook page in which he criticized government economic policies.
“We don’t know what he was told the case is. Maybe when he’s out he will tell us,” the source said.
Although it is not clear what let to Malek’s arrest, on August 20, he wrote a social media Facebook post in which he blamed the government for using dollars in buying weapons which in return ripped the country of an huge amount of money.
“When South Sudan had oil money and donations from friends, the government was busy investing those funds into guns and vehicles. Now, it is a time to shoot down the dollar rate,” he said.
“Bank of South Sudan (BoSS) is declared to be at zero reserves.”
