The latest break between the two foremost military and political leaders risks igniting civil war again for the embattled nation.
South Sudan has started holding a trial for First Vice President Riek Machar, who has been sacked by his decades-long rival, President Salva Kiir, and charged with murder, treason and crimes against humanity in relation to rebellion and an attack by a militia linked with ethnic tensions.
Machar and seven others who have been charged alongside him, including Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol, were seen sitting inside a barred cage in the court on Monday during a live broadcast on national television.
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Machar has been held in house arrest at his residence in the capital, Juba, for months following investigations by the government of his allies.
The Trial of Dr. Riek Machar Teny https://t.co/3T7CVp2ZDR
— South Sudan Eagles Media (@ssemtv) September 22, 2025
Earlier this month, a decree read on state radio said Kiir suspended the first vice president due to charges stemming from his alleged involvement in attacks by the White Army against federal forces in March.
The White Army, a loose band of armed youths, attacked a military base in Nasir, northeastern South Sudan, and killed more than 250 soldiers on Machar’s orders, according to the government.
Edmund Yakani, executive director of South Sudan activist group Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, told local media that the trial must be transparent and fair to build up trust in the judicial system.
He urged both leaders and their parties to “adhere to the principle of resolving political misunderstanding through dialogue” rather than violence, which would benefit no one.
Machar’s party, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-in Opposition (SPLM/IO), has called the charges “fabricated” and said its members were arrested illegally. Machar’s lawyer on Monday said “an incompetent court” that lacks jurisdiction is judging him.
Fears of a return to ruinous civil war
After the vice president’s arrest, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) called on all parties to exercise restraint and warned that they risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years” and returning to a state of civil war.
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and also one of its most impoverished.
In 2013, two years after the country gained independence from Sudan following decades of war, oil-producing South Sudan descended into a civil war.
The devastating conflict, which scarred the country and left some 400,000 people killed, pitted Kiir and his allies from the ethnic Dinka group against Machar, who is from the Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group in South Sudan.
More than four million people, or about one-third of the population, were displaced from their homes before a 2018 peace deal saw the pair form a “national unity” government.
But they never fully saw eye-to-eye, leaving the country in a state of limbo.
Both leaders held on to their armed factions that were never fully integrated and unified despite agreements, while reforms were delayed, and presidential elections were repeatedly postponed.
Armed clashes have erupted in several parts of the country over the past months, with both sides accusing each other of breaking ceasefire agreements.
Authorities in South Sudan are, in the meantime, plundering billions of dollars in public funds as the impoverished country also deals with a deepening food crisis, according to the UN.
“The country has been captured by a predatory elite that has institutionalised the systematic looting of the nation’s wealth for private gain,” the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said last week.
