It is now emerging that a South Sudanese whistleblower who also holds Kenyan citizenship was grabbed from a Nairobi suburb in the middle of the night and flown to Juba, where he is now being held inside a military camp. The man, identified as Athorbev Al-Gaddhaffy-Dit, had been living quietly in the city, but his loud allegations of corruption against South Sudan’s ruling elite had apparently made some powerful people very uncomfortable.
According to Amnesty International, which has been tracking the case closely, the 51-year-old was unlawfully deported and is currently locked up in a military detention facility in South Sudan’s capital. His troubles began on Tuesday, 11 June, at around three in the morning. His wife later told police that he had just left a casino on the edge of Nairobi when armed men wearing masks pounced on him, bundled him into a white car, and vanished into the dark.
Witness accounts recorded in the police report say the whole thing happened very fast. There was no time to shout or raise alarm. Before anyone could even understand what was happening, the vehicle had already sped off. For days, his family knew nothing. Now, sources say he is being held inside a camp in Juba, far from the home and life he had built in Kenya.
Friends and people who followed his work say he had been warning for a while that his life was in danger. He was digging into corruption linked to South Sudan’s top leadership, and that kind of thing does not go unpunished in that part of the world. A United Nations report from last year had already detailed how government officials in South Sudan stole billions of dollars from oil money while ordinary citizens were left with no hospitals, no roads, and hardly any basic services.
What makes this story even more painful for Kenyans is that Nairobi has long been seen as a safe place for people running away from harsh regimes. If you were a dissident from a neighbouring country, you would come here to breathe. But that reputation is now cracking. A former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Tibor Nagy, who served under Donald Trump, wrote on X that Nairobi used to be a refuge from authoritarian rulers, adding sadly that it seems that chapter is over.
He is not the only one who has been snatched from Kenyan soil. Just last November, Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye was also grabbed in Kenya and taken to a military court in Uganda, where he now faces treason charges. Before him, there have been cases of Turkish and Tanzanian dissidents who were picked up from different parts of the country, and nobody seems to know exactly how these operations keep happening.
Amnesty International had already warned earlier that Kenya was becoming too quiet about these abductions, almost as if it is now helping neighbouring countries do their dirty work. In the past, when such incidents were reported, Kenyan authorities would either say they had no idea what happened or claim they were just following proper requests from other governments. But critics say that excuse is wearing thin. If a man with Kenyan citizenship can be dragged from a casino in Nairobi and flown to a military prison in Juba without any court order or public record, then what does that say about safety in this country? That is the question many are now asking as they wait to see what the government will say this time.
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