Report 37 – The couple who lost everything
Summary
This week the court heard testimony from Juma Puok Gatkek and Nyakueh Dual Choul, a married couple from the area in and around Block 5A. Since they are married one might have thought that their testimonies would be very similar, but that turned out not to be the case. They did not know each other long before getting married and after getting married they did not always live together or even in the same village. According to South Sudanese cultural traditions, as they explained it, the bride sometimes stays with her own family for lengthy periods of time instead of living with the husband’s family. This is common if she is with child or if she is very young. This type of arrangement can be hard to understand from a Swedish perspective and during the hearing this difficulty was noticeable in the questions asked in the courtroom.
Juma Puok and Nyakueh’s testimonies were quite different. They had some similarities; for example, during the years from 1997 to 2001, they both lived in smaller villages close to Nhialdiu that were attacked by the military and regime-allied militia. In 2001 they both fled to Bentiu. Individually, Juma Puok’s testimony gave the court good insight into the attacks on the village Biel, a village that has come up several times in the case. What was most striking about Nyakueh’s testimony was how detailed she was able to describe the attack on Nong Gak in which her grandmother was killed. Both plaintiff’s told the court of how they experienced several attacks by the military and regime-allied militia in which they lost family members, cattle, food and property. When they were forced to flee to Bentiu in 2001 they had nothing left.
Hearing with Juma Puok Gatkek
The morning of Tuesday the 5th of November, the sign outside of Courtroom 34 just read “cancelled” causing confusion among the spectators and interpreters as there was no information about why the hearing was cancelled. Finally, a journalist covering the trial reported that the hearing had been postponed until after lunch. When the hearing finally started, the Court explained the delay. The two Nuer interpreters, Daniel and Luca (who Judge Zander now calls by their first names), got stuck in airplane traffic during their travels back to Kigali and only arrived at the courthouse a very short time before the hearing started. When everyone was gathered in the courtrooms, both in Kigali and Stockholm, the hearing could finally start. During this hearing, the plaintiff Juma Puok Gatkek answered questions about his life as a civilian in and near Block 5A from 1997 to 2003, and about two attacks on his home village of Biel in 1999 and 2000. Prosecutor Annika Wennerström led the hearing with Juma Puok.
The first year the prosecutor asked about was 1997. During that time, Juma Puok’s family was living in Biel, but he still lived in Khartoum where he was studying to become a teacher. He stayed in Khartoum until 1999 when he finished his studies, then returned to Biel. During that time, he could not visit his family at all. The road between Khartoum and the southern parts of Sudan was too dangerous because of all the militia along it, Juma told the court, which had heard similar testimony about how dangerous this trip could be from the last plaintiff.
When Juma Puok returned to Biel in 1999, the situation was already bad. According to him, the militias regularly looted and robbed local people and villages if there was anything they needed. If you resisted, you risked being tortured or beaten, he recalled. There were no rebels in the area at that time, they only came after Peter Gadet mutinied and started fighting Matiep and his militias in the year 2000.
The bombing of Biel in July 2000
During his testimony Juma Puok told the court of a tragedy that took place in Biel during July 2000 when the village was bombed by Antonov planes and many civilians were wounded, including his father and sister. In response to the prosecution’s questions, Juma Puok described in detail how barrels fell from the planes down on the houses in the village, destroying the houses when they exploded. The prosecution asked Juma Puok to clarify what he meant by Antonov planes, and he described them in the same way as nearly all the other plaintiffs have: a big, white, and very loud plane.
During this part of the hearing, Juma Pouk’s frustration over the prosecutor’s line of questioning, in which she repeatedly asked him about what he had seen himself versus what he had heard from others, was visible on his face. These kinds of questions tend to appear frustrating for the plaintiffs, who feel that the prosecutor is implying that an event did not happen if the plaintiff did not see it themselves. When facing repeated questions from the prosecution, it may be hard to understand that the prosecution’s goal is to clarify the value of the evidence and not challenge the truth of the statement.
In this attack, Juma Pouk’s sister was hit in the back with shrapnel and was badly hurt. She had fled from the house to hide outside along with the others when they heard the planes coming. However, the shrapnel from one of the bombs reached all the way to her hiding spot in the long grass surrounding the village. Juma Puok and the rest of their family immediately took her to a clinic in Nhialdiu where doctors had to operate to save her life. Juma Puok recalled that in the same attack, 34 of the family’s cows were killed and seven disappeared.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Juma Puok testified that his sister was the only one of his family members that was hurt in the attack. However, this changed on Wednesday. When prosecutor Annika Wennerström asked him again about this on Wednesday morning, Juma Puok said that he forgot to mention yesterday that his father was also hit in the shoulder in the same attack in which his sister was hurt. He was treated in the same clinic as his daughter. According to the medical staff at the clinic, it was shrapnel from the bombs that caused the injuries to Juma Puok’s father and sister.
After this attack, Juma Puok and his family could still live in their native village of Biel since they could plant new crops to harvest, which was enough to sustain the family. That would change after the next attack.
The attack on Biel in October 2001
Juma Puok described an attack on Biel by ground troops in October 2001. The troops arrived without warning. Juma Puok remembered the timing of the attack very clearly since it was during the harvest. The harvest was always close to October since it took place towards the end of the rainy period and the beginning of the dry period when the rains were less frequent.
The military used heavy weapons that Juma Puok compared to the bombs that fell from the Antonov’s and that lit many houses on fire. He described them as big weapons on the ground that were fired from far away and hit the ground like a bomb. At one point during the hearing. Juma Puok mentioned that the military was “shelling” the village. An earlier plaintiff testified about the Sudanese military being seen with RPGs, which could have been the source of the shelling Juma Pouk described in his testimony.
According to Juma Puok, the SPLA was not present in Biel at this time, but they did have a camp in another area closer to the river. There was no one who could defend the village against the military at this time. Juma Puok also repeatedly said that during the two attacks on his village by bomber planes and ground troops, he and his family lost everything. They lost everything they owned and had nothing left: no food, no cattle – nothing with which they could sustain themselves.
The prosecution also asked Juma Puok if he knew why Biel was attacked by ground troops in 2001. To this Juma said that when they made it to Nhialdiu and later to Bentiu, they heard about a company drilling for oil, which people claimed was the reason for the fighting. He also knew about the road that was being built from Bentiu to Nhialdiu. From the same people, he heard that civilians feared going close to the road construction site since the military would shoot at people who did so. The local people were very wary of this road since they thought the building of it would hurt them and rob them of their land. The road also had a smaller off-shoot close to Biel, but this only continued a little bit into the forest and Juma Puok still did not know what it was for since there was no village or anything in that specific area. When the prosecutor asked Juma Puok if there was ever any roadwork inside of Biel, he replied no. This seemed to be a bit disappointing to the prosecutor.
It was after the ground troop attack on Biel that Juma Puok and his family decided to flee to Bentiu. They lived with family for a month until Juma Puok found a job. He worked as a teacher in Bentiu at this time and they also received aid from the UN. They were in Bentiu until 2005.
At multiple times throughout his testimony, Juma Puok described how badly these experiences had affected his health in many ways. He said that he was traumatized by the attacks on his village and the times they were forced to flee and that this was a sensitive subject for him to talk about.
Questioning of Juma Puok by the defence
The defence started their questioning of Juma Puok by asking him why he did not tell the court about his father’s injuries yesterday but did so today. This was expected since it was exactly the type of inconsistency that the defence usually brings up when questioning plaintiffs. With almost every plaintiff, the defence has cited differences between what was said in the courtroom and what was said in the police interviews and then asked the plaintiff to comment on the discrepancies. The plaintiffs have had different reactions to being put in this situation: some have seemed to panic and have blamed someone else, like the interpreter, while others have calmly stood by their statements. Juma Pouk blamed what he himself called the “human factor.” He had simply forgotten yesterday about his father getting hurt but remembered it today.
The atmosphere in the courtroom suddenly got tense when the judge stopped the defence from asking a question, saying that he did not understand the grounds on which the question was being asked. The defence had asked whether Juma Puok’s father was also wounded in his, legs in addition to the shoulder injury, and if Juma Puok was claiming that these injuries led to his death several years later. Judge Zander noted that the defence was quoting from an interview in which the plaintiff had also stated that his father died of diabetes. To resolve the issue, the defence played the audio recording from the police interview and the Nuer interpreters confirmed that Juma Puok could be heard saying that his father was wounded in the leg, but did not say anything about the cause of his father’s death.
The tense atmosphere was relieved some moments later when the courtroom in Kigali lost connection to the sound from Stockholm and began discussing amongst themselves whether they could be heard in Stockholm – all of which was broadcast through the speakers in the Stockholm courtroom.
Testimony from Nyakueh Dual Choul
The next plaintiff to testify in the trial was Juma Puok’s wife, Nyakueh Dual Choul. She had been sitting right next to the plaintiff’s counsel in the courtroom in Kigali during Juma Puok’s testimony, but when it was her time to testify, they switched chairs, and the camera zoomed in on her. Nyakueh testified about an attack by the Sudanese military on the village of Nong Gak in which her grandmother was killed. In the same attack, much of Nyakueh’s family’s cattle was killed and their property was destroyed.
Nyakueh was born in the village of Lyak Pak in 1989. She grew up in a small village near Nhialdiu, Nong Gak, with her parents and siblings. Nyakueh told the court that she never had the opportunity to go to school or learn to read or write. This was relevant for assessing her testimony, as it may have been a reason why she sometimes had trouble identifying events in terms of specific years and months. Nyakueh was very young when she married Juma Pouk, only 13 or 14 years old. Today they have three sons together, the oldest of which is 21 years old.
Attack on Nong Gak
As Nyakueh was telling her story, the hearing was momentarily disrupted by a loud background noise from the courtroom in Kigali. After some confusion, it became clear that it had started raining very heavily in Kigali and the noise was the sound of the rain hitting the courthouse’s roof and windows . The sound evoked the feeling of the kind of heavy rain that can only happen in warmer climates, and for a moment the courtroom in Stockholm felt a little closer to the equator. But then Nyakueh continued her story, and the court was brought back to reality.
The day Nyakueh’s grandmother was killed, armed helicopter gunships came to the village. Everyone ran in different directions to get away from them. Nyakueh and some of her family ran one way while her grandmother ran another way. They were separated for a time while they all ran for safety. When Nyakueh and the rest of her family finally dared to come out of their hiding spot, they found Nyakueh’s grandmother lying dead in the grass. There was a lot of blood and the grass around her body was burnt. They could see that a bullet had entered right through her heart and then gone through her body and out through her back. Nyakueh testified that she felt that this was a big tragedy and that she got very sad when talking or thinking about it. In this attack houses were also burnt, and they lost cattle.
In her testimony, Nyakueh told the court about how the war had been ongoing in Nong Gak even before the attack in which her grandmother was killed. This was not the first time gunships had come flying over the village, spreading fear amongst the civilians. It was known that when the helicopter spotted someone running on the ground, it would follow them, firing at them until they were dead. Ground soldiers, whom Nyakueh identified as Sudanese military soldiers because of their brown skin and camouflage uniforms, would also sometimes come to the village. These soldiers fired at civilians and Nyakueh testified that she had seen people getting shot but said that she did not want to talk about it. When talking about these attacks during the hearing, Nyakueh did not mention anything about rebels being or not being in the village at the time of the attacks, something that the defence later questioned.
After her grandmother was killed, Nyakueh and her parents decided to leave Nong Gak and flee to Bentiu, where she reunited with her husband Juma Pouk. On the way to Bentiu they passed through many villages where it was evident that the same kind of attack had taken place. Many houses were burnt, and if there were people still living in the villages, they were only old people that could not leave. Sometimes they would also see dead bodies.
Cross-examination by the defence
In the same manner as before, the defence attorney Olle Kullinger began the cross-examination by confronting the plaintiff with statements she had made during the police interviews that did not conform to her statements made in the court. The first such example was that Nyakueh has claimed in interviews that she was in Biel during the attacks in which her husband’s sister and father were injured. The transcripts from the interviews were shown on the courtroom screens and the interpreters read it aloud in both English and Nuer. Nyakueh testified that what she remembered about the interview was that she told the police about her grandmother being killed and their houses looted and destroyed. She also said that this was very long ago, and a lot had happened in her life since then.
Back and forth between the defence and the prosecution
The day ended with an intense back and forth between the defence and the prosecution. The defence concluded their cross-examination by asking Nyakueh if her statement in the police interview that there were 400-500 rebels in the village of Nang Gak was correct and that they were there when her grandmother was shot. She affirmed that the presence of these rebels coincided with the attack in which her grandmother was killed.
However, the prosecution then immediately asked for their own cross-examination and called for Nyakueh to describe what she remembered about these rebels. It was unclear whether Nyakueh at the time had been able to distinguish between rebels, militia, and the military. She had said earlier in the hearing that she could only tell them apart by their skin colour – if they were lighter or darker. The soldiers with lighter skin belonged to the Sudanese army since they were Arab, but both the regime-allied militia and the rebels were all dark skinned, so it was hard to draw any conclusion from her statements about this. When the prosecutor then asked about the figure she had mentioned of 400-500 rebels and how she could be sure that this number was correct, she answered that she could not be sure since she had never been to school and does not know how to count. She explained that there were many rebels there but not exactly how many.
The defence in turn requested to ask follow-up questions and asked if it was true that there were rebels in the village during the attack in which her grandmother was killed. Nyakueh now replied no: her grandmother was killed in another situation that involved gunships and that the rebels in Nang Gak were already defeated at this point. This led the defence to bring up the transcripts of the 2019 police interview in Kampala, this time with additions where the defence had themselves listened to the tapes from the interview and written down what they believe was said. According to this translation, in 2019 Nyakueh stated that there were rebels in the village when her grandmother was killed.
As per the earlier agreed-upon arrangement, the conflict was resolved by the Nuer translators listening to the audio recording of the interview live in the courtroom and presenting their conclusion about whether the defence’s translation was correct or not. The Nuer interpreters listened to the recording and then said that they were not correct. According to them, the Nuer interpreter heard in the police interview had made a mistake and missed a part where Nyakueh stated that while the rebels were in Nong Gak from time to time, there were no rebels there when her grandmother was killed. This clearly shocked the defence and after a stunned moment of silence they quickly said that they would double check their own translation later and that they currently had no more questions.
Next report
The next report will account for the testimonies of Moses Ruai Lat Dak and Angelina Nyador Kuany, the 31st and 32nd plaintiff in the Lundin Oil Case.
