\n South Sudan's opposition said Saturday it had misidentified a prisoner in a photograph as a bodyguard of its leader who died in custody amid widespread arrests of their supporters.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a statement, the opposition said the leader's office had been given an old photo and wrongly believed it showed the death in custody of Luka Gathok Nyuon.\n<\/p>\n
\n The opposition had previously identified Nyuon as a bodyguard to the opposition leader and ex-vice president Riek Machar.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It has come to my attention that this photo was in fact taken few years back in Rumbek prison and does not... (show) our fallen comrade,\" opposition SPLA-IO party spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said in a statement, without giving details on the bodyguard's current circumstances.\n<\/p>\n
\n The statement on X said Nyuon \"passed on in detention in Juba\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The government of President Salva Kiir has locked up dozens of opposition members in recent months, accusing them of fomenting violence.\n<\/p>\n
\n The opposition says Kiir is seeking to consolidate power and has effectively destroyed a 2018 power-sharing deal that ended a devastating five-year civil war in which some 400,000 people died.\n<\/p>\n
\n Machar, Kiir's long-time rival, has been stripped of his position as vice-president in the unity government and will appear in court from Monday on charges of treason and crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n He is accused of coordinating an attack on a military base by the White Army, a militia group from his ethnic Nuer community, which his party denies.\n<\/p>\n
\n His supporters accused the government of locking up more than 100 \"officials and officers\" from Machar's entourage \"under very harsh conditions including torture, starvation and denial of medical care\".\n<\/p>\n
\n South Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, has suffered chronic instability since it became independent from Sudan in 2011.\n<\/p>\n
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South Sudan's opposition said Saturday it had misidentified a prisoner in a photograph as a bodyguard of its leader who died in custody amid widespread arrests of their supporters. In a statement, the opposition said the leader's office had been given an old photo and wrongly believed it showed the death in custody of Luka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-150052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n