On December 22, 2021, Animu Athiei was leaving a café at the airport road of the South Sudanese capital Juba when members of the country’s secret police grabbed and put her into their van. That afternoon was the beginning of two months in detention for the 38-year-old youth activist and politician.
The plainclothes officers who took her merely told her while she was briefly detained by them, that she was under investigation but gave no more details.
