This article was last updated on May 27, 2022
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It has been almost five months now since Livio was detained by security agents. He has not been charged with any offense and has been denied legal aid and contact with family.
Under South Sudan’s penal code, the authorities must either release Livio or take him to court within 24 hours of detaining him. But that has not been observed since his detention.
South Sudan Civil Society Organization is demanding that George Livio be given access to legal aid.
Mr. Edmund Yakani, the Executive Director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), is appealing to the Country’s leadership to ensure that the denied service to the detained Journalist be allowed.
In a press statement by Mr. Yakani explained that, “South Sudan’s Transitional Constitution 2011 Article 19 (8) states that ‘Any accused person has the right to defend himself or herself in person or through a lawyer of his or her own choice or alternatively where incase he or she may not have a lawyer to defend him or her in any serious offence, a legal aid should be assigned to him or her by the government’.
Denying the detained journalist an access to his lawyer is a clear violation of the constitutional right as stipulated in the Country’s Transitional Constitution 2011 Article 19(8).
Yakani said that unless he is being detained for political reason, the organization is not calling for his release but a trial through an appropriate court in the presence of the accused person’s lawyer.
“Mr. Livio’s trial has never been done openly in the court with the help of a competent lawyer. It is completelyunfair, where is the justice? Justice delayed, is justice denied,” decried Mr. Yakani.
In October 2014, Mr. Livio Buhara, the father of the detained South Sudanese journalist, broke his silence as he came out through the media to demand from the security service personnel, for the release of his detained son George Livio.
In his appeal, Mr. Buhara also called for the fair and transparent trial of his son over his alleged role in subversive activities saying everybody must be subjected to law provided that appropriate procedures are followed than detaining him or her for months without allowing him to face court.
Livio was arrested with five others in Western Bahr el Ghazal state then moved to Juba by the National Security Service operatives.
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