South Sudan’s Riek Machar in Sudan for treatment

The leader of the SPLM-In Opposition in South Sudan, Riek Machar, is currently in Sudan for urgent medical attention, after withdrawing from clashes in Juba mid-July.

The Minister of Information and government's official spokesman, Ahmed Bilal Osman, informed the Sudanese News Agency in a press statement on Tuesday that “the brothers in South Sudan have been duly notified about this matter.”

He stated that Machar was received for “purely humanitarian reasons”, the top priority being “his need for urgent medical attention”.

The health condition of the former South Sudanese vice-president is now reportedly stable and he will stay in the country under full medical supervision until he leaves to complete his medical treatment.

Machar fled Juba in mid-July when fighting between his forces and the South Sudanese army flared again, just when he was about to resume his role as vice-president. An opposition spokesman, James Gatdet Dak, writing on his Facebook page, said its fighters had “successfully relocated our leader to a neighbouring country where he will now have unhindered access to the rest of the world and the media”. Machar did sustain a leg injury from weeks of walking in the bush but it was not serious enough to require medical attention, Dak said.

DRC

Last week the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced to have handed over Machar to the authorities in the country. An operation was undertaken by the Monusco UN mission on humanitarian grounds to facilitate the extraction of Riek Machar, his wife and 10 others from a location in the DRC in support of the DRC authorities, a UN spokesman said.