South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar Charged With Treason

South Sudan’s first Vice President Riek Machar has been charged with murder, treason, and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in attacks by an ethnic militia against federal forces in March, the country’s justice minister announced on Thursday.

Hours after the announcement, President Salva Kiir suspended Machar from his post, in a decree read on state radio without offering further details. Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, who was charged alongside Machar, was also suspended.

The charges and suspensions mark a dramatic escalation in the feud between South Sudan’s two dominant political camps, led by Kiir and Machar, whose rivalry fueled a 2013–2018 civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced millions.

Justice Minister Joseph Geng Akech told reporters that the March assault on a military base in Nasir, Northeastern South Sudan, left more than 250 soldiers dead. He accused the White Army militia of carrying out the attack “under the command and influence of certain leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in Opposition (SPLM/A-iO), including Dr. Riek Machar Teny.”

“These crimes were marked by gross violations of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, including the desecration of corpses, persecution of civilians and attacks on humanitarian workers,” Akech said.

Machar has been under house arrest since March in connection with the Nasir incident. International powers have repeatedly called for his release, warning that his detention risks plunging the fragile country back into war.

Alongside Machar and Puot Kang, 20 other people were indicted in the case. Seven are in custody while 13 remain at large, authorities said.

Edmund Yakani, executive director of the civil society group Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, urged fairness in the proceedings. “We hope the court trying Machar and the seven others will be a competent court of law, not a kangaroo court of law,” he said in a statement.

Kiir and Machar had served together in a unity government formed under a 2018 peace agreement, but their partnership has been fraught. Sporadic violence between their respective factions has continued, raising fears that the world’s youngest nation, born in 2011 after decades of conflict with Sudan, could be edging back toward all-out civil war.