Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The spokesperson of the national police service has dismissed social media reports that some suspected teenage gang groups detained in the ongoing crackdown have been sent to the frontline in Nasir of Upper Nile.
Major General James Monday Enoka, who spoke to Eye Radio in an exclusive interview yesterday, said the widely circulated social media reports about alleged deployment of gang members arrested last week, was false.
He said the police service has no legal mandate to deploying civilians to war zones.
“For those who are saying the arrested criminals have been sent to the front line, this is baseless because it is soldiers who have been recruited according to the law and whose ages are above 18 years and they are trained all the tactics of the soldiers or the police and then they can be sent to operations,” he clarified.
The police service arrested more than 600 alleged gang members in Juba last week, according to Central Equatoria State government.
The arrests followed a disturbing incident in Gumbo-Sherikat where a teenage girl was gang-raped in a social media footage, by several young men allegedly affiliated with a gang group.
Gen. Enoka said police service has instead been transferring some of the detained gang members outside Juba to the states, but failed short of naming the states where they had been relocated to.
He did not also disclose the number of the suspects transferred out of Juba but added that the move was taken to due to lack of space at the detention facility at the Buluk Police Headquarters.
“The reality is that detention centers in Juba are overcrowded. When capacity is exceeded, some detainees are transferred to other facilities within the country for counselling and reformation. That is the procedure. These rumors are unfounded, and I want to clarify this for the public,” he added.
He said the Buluk detention facility is only being used for investigative purposes and not for frontline deployment.
He added that the ongoing crack down is targeting gang groups identified in several neighbourhoods in Sherikat, Gudele, Nyakuron, New Site and other areas.
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