surrounds

WASHINGTON — When President Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.

Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.

The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.

The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.

A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.

“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”

Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.

“The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.

Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.

Army declines to release contract

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees.

Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre site is near the U.S.-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.

The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.

The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.

At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.

Three white tents, each about 810 feet long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by the Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.

Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases hearkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.

“Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”

Company will be responsible for security

A June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.

The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.

Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51% of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.

One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.

Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.

Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a U.S. federal court in Washington.

Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.

In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.

A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.

Biesecker and Goodman write for the Associated Press. Goodman reported from Miami. AP writer Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — As the Mother of All Dirty Campaigns gathers its facts and innuendo for November, probable Democratic nominee Bill Clinton is already so smeared and so ready to return fire that George Bush, in his clean white shirt of upright Republicanism and family values, can look forward to a savaging of his own. How much of this dirt sticks could be critically important.

Political logic, press reports and recent Democratic mutterings all suggest the main fire will be directed against three targets. First, the business ethics of the Bush family, three presidential sons and three presidential brothers, some with eyes for a marginally tainted deal. Second, Bush’s personal relationships–about which there have been snide hints, but no proof. And third, far more important in its national implications, the argument that, under this Administration, U.S. foreign policy–ostensibly the laurel wreath on Bush’s imperial brow–has become a gravy train for Bush family members and policy advisers, and for GOP campaign functionaries, who openly double as registered foreign agents.

Significantly, this last point is bipartisan. Vivid indictments have been made by GOP nomination rival Patrick J. Buchanan. Moreover, potential third-party candidate H. Ross Perot, a nominal Republican, is given to making harsh charges about Bush’s Persian Gulf connections. But on the first two subjects, the messengers will be Democratic and the motivation as political as Election Day itself.

The length and intensity of the trail of vaguely sleazy deals, apparent influence-peddling and periodic legal wrist-slappings left by Bush family members while their relative is in the White House is only the second-biggest surprise. The biggest is that George Herbert Walker Bush, Mr. Patrician Probity, let it happen.

Other Presidents have had the problem with several sons ( Franklin D. Roosevelt) or one brother (Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter), and should have served as cautionary examples for Bush–which makes his paternal and fraternal permissiveness so hard to understand.

The most recent sweeping indictment came in a March 27 column on the New York Times Op-Ed page portraying: 1) son Neil’s grubby conflict-of-interest involvement with the failed Silverado savings and loan (he was fined a relative pittance of $50,000); 2) son Jeb’s “unwitting” acceptance of improper political contributions; 3) brother Prescott’s highly paid role as adviser to a Tokyo investment firm identified by Japanese police as a mob front, and 4) son George Jr.’s 1990 dumping of $848,000 of Harken Energy Co. stock in possible violation of SEC insider-trading regulations. The only consolation for the President must have come in the apparent space limitation: There was no room for brother Jonathan’s 1991 violation of securities laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for which he was fined more than $30,000 and (in Massachusetts) barred from trading with the public for one year.

Based on previous Administrations, one or perhaps two family transgressions could be taken as typical. Bush’s problem is that Democratic campaign commercials will make the multiplicity of it come alive–perhaps portraying the Bushes as the First Family of Financial Flimflam–and throwing dirt as well on the motivations in the President’s relentless advocacy of capital-gains tax cuts.

Meanwhile, Democratic National Chairman Ronald H. Brown and others have been tee-heeing that, if the press discusses allegations about Clinton’s girlfriends, it should deal with kindred speculation about Bush. Well, maybe, but not necessarily. Comedian Mark Russell has joked on TV about Republican girlfriends named Jennifer being classier–they spell their names with a “J.” But back in 1988, similar rumors that major media were about to pursue an old Bush relationship never came true. But, for 1992, Clinton’s Gennifer Flowers problem could mean that, at some point, Democrats have little to lose from recklessness or even irresponsibility.

Paradoxically, however, the less titillating charges may be most serious–that, under Bush, the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs is starting to resemble the “bank” at the House of Representatives: a cash club for the favored and faithful. Alas, it is hard to overstate the ethical and historical transformation of U.S. foreign policy since the days of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower or even Carter. No one had to examine Lend-Lease, the Marshall Plan or U.S.-Soviet detente for private economic deals involving the President’s family or the fingerprints of presidential campaign spokesmen who doubled as lobbyists for foreign interests and governments.

Compared with Bush, however, no previous President has had so many immediate family members involved in what can politely be called international consulting and deal-making. Until 1990, brother Prescott S. Bush Jr. was an adviser to New York-based Asset Management International, partly owned by West Tsusho, a Japanese investment company. In February, NBC News reported Prescott had stood to make $1 million by arranging U.S. deals for Tsusho, which Japanese police say is a front for the Inagawakai crime syndicate. Son George, meanwhile, is a significant shareholder–along with Saudi and South African investors–in a Texas company, Harken Energy. Just before the Gulf War, Harken won a major oil-drilling contract–one it had no obvious qualification for–from Bahrain.

Brother William (Bucky) Bush is an international consultant who has been advising Samsung, the Korean conglomerate, on U.S. investments. Son John E. (Jeb), running his father’s reelection campaign in Florida, is an international real-estate investor, who has received multimillion-dollar backing from Japan’s Mitsui Trust. Lawyers in a suit filed against the shadowy Bank of Commerce and Credit International have just identified Jeb as a potential witness because his company invested in real estate with a company controlled by a major BCCI borrower.

Several of the President’s closest foreign-policy advisers have been mired in financial conflict-of-interest situations. In 1988, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, approved policies that permitted U.S. banks to avoid having to write off a portion of their hefty loans to Brazil. Baker himself was a prime beneficiary of this policy, because stock in New York’s Chemical Bank, where he had a large chunk, quickly rose 40%.

Conflict-of-interest issues have even been raised about the Gulf War. In October, 1990, the President denied, no doubt justly, that son George’s Bahrain oil connection had any influence on his commitment of troops to rescue Kuwait. However, the President himself had a commercial connection with Kuwait. Many years earlier, as he told White House dinner guests, his company had built Kuwait’s first offshore oil well.

In a more speculative vein, there is the possible Washington pro-war leverage of several Gulf owners of BCCI, the shadowy international bank that helped finance Iran-Contra. Press accounts suggest that Sheik Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence, and Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayan of Abu Dhabi, the bank’s dominant shareholder, were both able to use BCCI as their piggy bank, which presumably gave them enormous influence in Washington. Zayed, meanwhile, has been treated with kid gloves at every point of the U.S. government’s continuing BCCI investigation.

Quite extraordinarily, Zayed’s chief Washington strategist happens to be James A. Lake, deputy manager of the Bush reelection campaign, who also butters his bread as U.S. public-relations adviser to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one vehicle by which Zayed holds majority control of BCCI. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has been chairing the Senate BCCI investigation, recently demanded Lake’s resignation: “I have to question the propriety of the President of the United States’ campaign being managed by someone who is simultaneously being paid over $200,000 every three months to represent BCCI’s biggest shareholder.”

Democratic researchers have thick folders to amplify these and other reported incidents. White House strategists may be making a mistake in assuming that voters now judging Clinton harshly won’t do the same for Bush.

Part of the explanation for the collapse of any serious conflict-of-interest yardstick to restrain the mingling of party politics, personal business and the for-profit modification of U.S. foreign policy is simple. Back in the mid-1980s, the line between private industry, private financial bankrollers and foreign policy was dissolved in the Iran-Contra blueprint to aid the Nicaraguan rebels. Since then, Persian Gulf bankers and Washington consultants have become de facto assistant secretaries of state and assistant U.S. trade representatives. In 1987, leading members of Congress involved in the Iran-Contra investigation voiced fears about the dangers of the privatization of foreign policy. They were prophetic.

Further proof of the privatization pudding has since emerged in the central role that registered agents or lobbyists for foreign interests have played in the 1992 GOP presidential campaign. But not everyone was pleased. Buchanan ran TV commercials and made speeches criticizing Lake’s status as a lobbyist for various Japanese interests, while the firm of Charles Black, another senior Bush adviser, also has foreign clients. Buchanan’s campaign manager said, “Bush has Japanese foreign agents running his campaign, (and) a Panamanian agent running the Republican Party.”

No other major nation was so permissive, but old barriers had dissolved, and with them, old proprieties. In late February, another presidential candidate, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey attacked the financial dealings of Bush and his family, noting that brother Prescott was “building a golf course” in China for the “butcher of Tien An Men Square,” and charging that Bush policy “is pretty closely tied to his own family interests.” In March, Perot, revealing his plans for a possible third-party presidential bid, spiced his anti-Washington rhetoric by proposing “a law making it a criminal offense for foreign companies or individuals to influence U.S. laws or policies with money.” Legislation like that would strike at the heart of both privatized foreign policy and Washington’s international influence bazaar. But Perot–the derring-do businessman who arranged for a commando raid into Iran to free two of his employees a decade ago–understands what Iran-Contra unleashed.

In a year of profound public disillusionment, the politics could be incendiary. Just as the House of Representatives’ check-bouncing scandal essentially represents Democratic institutional corruption–though 25%-30% of congressmen involved are Republicans–the executive branch’s moral breakdown on foreign-policy corruption and self-dealing is institutionally Republican–though a fair minority of Washington’s foreign agents and international consultants are Democrats.

If his eventual presidential rivals pick up the criticisms now beginning to swirl, Bush could find the 1992 foreign-policy debate turning ugly.

WASHINGTON — It was a surprising statement from Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi as the Trump administration promises to release more files from its sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein: The FBI, she said, was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of the wealthy financier “with children or child porn.”

The comment, made to reporters at the White House days after a similar remark to a stranger with a hidden camera, raised the stakes for President Trump’s administration to prove it has in its possession previously unseen compelling evidence. That task is all the more pressing after an earlier document dump that Bondi hyped angered elements of Trump’s base by failing to deliver new bombshells and as administration officials who had promised to unlock supposed secrets of the so-called government “deep state” struggle to fulfill that pledge.

Yet weeks after Bondi’s remarks, it remains unclear what she was referring to.

The Associated Press spoke with lawyers and law enforcement officials in criminal cases of Epstein and socialite former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell who said they hadn’t seen and didn’t know of a trove of recordings like what Bondi described. Indictments and detention memos do not reference the existence of videos of Epstein with children, and neither was charged with possession of child sex abuse material even though that offense would have been much easier to prove than the sex trafficking counts they faced.

One potential clue may lie in a little-noticed 2023 court filing — among hundreds of documents reviewed by the AP — in which Epstein’s estate was revealed to have located an unspecified number of videos and photos that it said might contain child sex abuse material. But even that remains shrouded in secrecy with lawyers involved in that civil case saying a protective order prevents them from discussing it.

The filing suggests a discovery of recordings after the criminal cases had concluded, but if that’s what Bondi was referencing, the Justice Department has not said.

The department declined repeated requests from the AP to speak with officials overseeing the Epstein review. Spokespeople did not answer a list of questions about Bondi’s comments, including when and where the recordings were procured, what they depict and whether they were newly discovered as authorities dug through their evidence collection or were known for some time to have been in the government’s possession.

“Outside sources who make assertions about materials included in the DOJ’s review cannot speak to what materials are included in the DOJ’s review,” spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said in a statement.

Bondi has faced pressure after first release fell short of expectations

Epstein’s crimes, high-profile connections and jailhouse suicide have made the case a magnet for conspiracy theorists and online sleuths seeking proof of a cover-up. Elon Musk entered the frenzy during his acrimonious fallout with Trump when he said without evidence in a since-deleted social media post that the reason the Epstein files have yet to be released is that the Republican president is featured in them.

During a Fox News Channel interview in February, Bondi suggested an alleged Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk. The next day, the Justice Department distributed binders marked “declassified” to far-right influencers at the White House, but it quickly became clear much of the information had long been in the public domain. No “client list” was disclosed, and there’s no evidence such a document exists.

The flop left conservatives fuming and failed to extinguish conspiracy theories that for years have spiraled around Epstein’s case. Right wing-personality Laura Loomer called on Bondi to resign, branding her a “total liar.”

Afterward, Bondi said an FBI “source” informed her of the existence of thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents and ordered the bureau to provide the “full and complete Epstein files,” including any videos. Employees since then have logged hours reviewing records to prepare them for release. It’s unclear when that might happen.

In April, Bondi was approached in a restaurant by a woman with a hidden camera who asked about the status of the Epstein files release. Bondi replied that there were tens of thousands of videos “and it’s all with little kids,” so she said the FBI had to go through each one.

After conservative activist James O’Keefe, who obtained and later publicized the hidden-camera video, alerted the Justice Department to the encounter, Bondi told reporters at the White House: “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.”

The comments tapped into long-held suspicions that, despite the release over the years of thousands of records documenting Epstein’s activities, damaging details about him or other prominent figures remain concealed.

The situation was further muddied by recent comments from FBI Director Kash Patel to podcaster Joe Rogan that did not repeat Bondi’s account about tens of thousands of videos.

Though not asked explicitly about Bondi, Patel dismissed the possibility of incriminating videos of powerful Epstein friends, saying, “If there was a video of some guy or gal committing felonies on an island and I’m in charge, don’t you think you’d see it?” Asked whether the narrative “might not be accurate that there’s video of these guys doing this,” he replied, “Exactly.”

Epstein took his own life before he could stand trial

Epstein’s suicide in August 2019, weeks after his arrest, prevented a trial in New York and cut short the discovery process in which evidence is shared among lawyers.

But even in a subsequent prosecution of Maxwell, in which such evidence would presumably have been relevant given the nature of the accusations against an alleged co-conspirator, salacious videos of Epstein with children never surfaced nor were part of the case, said one of her lawyers.

“We were never provided with any of those materials. I suspect if they existed, we would have seen them, and I’ve never seen them, so I have no idea what [Bondi is] talking about,” said Jeffrey Pagliuca, who represented Maxwell in a 2021 trial in which she was convicted of luring teenage girls to be molested by Epstein.

To be sure, photographs of nude or seminude girls have long been known to be part of the case. Investigators recovered possibly thousands of such pictures while searching Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, and a videorecorded walk-through by law enforcement of his Palm Beach, Fla., home revealed sexually suggestive photographs displayed inside, court records show.

Accounts from more than one accuser of feeling watched or seeing cameras or surveillance equipment in Epstein’s properties have contributed to public expectations of sexual recordings. A 2020 Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility report on the handling of an earlier Epstein investigation hinted at that possibility, saying police who searched his Palm Beach home in 2005 found computer keyboards, monitors and disconnected surveillance cameras, but the equipment — including video recordings and other electronic items — was missing.

There’s no indication prosecutors obtained any missing equipment during the later federal investigation, and the indictment against him included no recording allegations.

An AP review of hundreds of documents in the Maxwell and Epstein criminal cases identified no reference to tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with underage girls.

“I don’t recall personally ever having that kind of discussion,” said one Epstein lawyer, Marc Fernich, who couldn’t rule out such evidence wasn’t located later. “It’s not something I ever heard about.”

In one nonspecific reference to video evidence, prosecutors said in a 2020 filing that they would produce to Maxwell’s lawyers thousands of images and videos from Epstein’s electronic devices in response to a warrant.

But Pagliuca said his recollection was those videos consisted largely of recordings in which Epstein was “musing” into a recording device — “Epstein talking to Epstein,” he said.

A revelation from the Epstein estate

Complicating efforts to assess the Epstein evidence is the volume of accusers, court cases and districts where legal wrangling has occurred, including after Epstein’s suicide and Maxwell’s conviction.

The cases include 2022 lawsuits in Manhattan’s federal court from an accuser identified as Jane Doe 1 and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home, alleging that financial services giant JPMorgan Chase failed to heed red flags about him being a “high-risk” customer.

Lawyers issued a subpoena for any video recordings or photos that could bolster their case.

They told a judge months later the Epstein estate had alerted them that it had found content that “might contain child sex abuse imagery” while responding to the subpoena and requested a protocol for handling “videorecorded material and photographs.” The judge ordered representatives of Epstein’s estate to review the materials before producing them to lawyers and to alert the FBI to possible child sexual abuse imagery.

Court filings don’t detail the evidence or say how many videos or images were found, and it’s unclear whether the recordings Bondi referenced were the same ones.

The estate’s disclosure was later included by a plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, in a complaint to the FBI and the Justice Department asserting that investigators had failed over the years to adequately collect potential evidence of child sex abuse material.

Freeman cited Bondi’s comments in a new lawsuit on behalf of an Epstein accuser who alleges the financier assaulted her in 1996. In an interview, Freeman said she had not seen recordings and had no direct knowledge but wanted to understand what Bondi meant.

“I want to know what she’s addressing, what is she talking about — I’d like to know that,” she said.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press. AP journalist Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

Oil minister and deputy army chief arrested as soldiers surround Vice President Riek Machar’s home in the capital in latest threat to 2018 peace deal.

South Sudanese forces have arrested the petroleum minister and several senior military officials allied with First Vice President Riek Machar as soldiers surrounded his home in the capital, Juba.

Deputy army chief, General Gabriel Duop Lam, a Machar loyalist, was held on Tuesday, while Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol was arrested on Wednesday alongside his bodyguards and family.

No reason was given for the arrests, which came after an armed group allied to Machar overran an army base in the country’s northern Upper Nile state.

Machar, whose political rivalry with President Salva Kiir has in the past exploded into civil war, said last month that the firing of several of his allies from posts in the government threatened a 2018 peace deal between him and Kiir.

The deal had ended a five-year civil war in which more than 400,000 people were killed. Water Minister Pal Mai Deng, spokesman for Machar’s SPLM-IO party, said Lam’s arrest “puts the entire peace agreement at risk”.

“This action violates the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan and cripples the Joint Defence Board, a vital institution of the Agreement responsible for the command and control of all forces. This act puts the entire agreement at risk,” the statement by Deng said.

“We are also gravely concerned about the heavy deployment of SSPDF [South Sudan army troops] around the residence of … Machar,” he wrote. “These actions erode confidence and trust among the parties.”

Another Machar spokesman, Puok Both Baluang, said other senior military officials allied with Machar have been placed under house arrest.

“As of now, there’s not any reason provided to us that led to the arrest or the detention of [these] officials,” Baluang told the Reuters news agency.

Major-General Lul Ruai Koang, the South Sudan army spokesperson, said in a statement late on Tuesday that he would not comment on the arrest or the troops surrounding Machar’s residence.

The civil war that broke out in December 2013 after Kiir sacked Machar also drove more than 2.5 million people from their homes and left almost half the nation of 11 million struggling to find enough food.

The tensions appear to have been sparked by growing concern over unrest in Upper Nile.

The SSPDF has accused Lam and his troops of working with the so-called White Army rebels in the region, who are predominantly from the same ethnic Nuer community.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan last month reported increased fighting between the army and “armed youth” in Nasir County in Upper Nile, involving “heavy weaponry which has, reportedly, resulted in deaths and injuries to civilians as well as armed personnel”.

The civil war began just two years after South Sudan became independent from Sudan. The country remains mired in poverty and violence.

Ter Manyang Gatwich, executive director of the Center for Peace and Advocacy, called for the immediate release of those arrested to avert further escalation of violence and further bloodshed from degenerating into what he called a “full-scale war”.