The Government of South Sudan has launched the cybercrimes specialized public prosecution attorney and the court to investigate and prosecute the crimes related to cyber security.
The special court and prosecutor will be charged with handling crimes related to information system networks, software computers, the internet, and other related crimes by the use of a computer program, code, applications, graphic card, memory card, chip or processor, commuter storage, inputs and outputs devices.
“The law have mandated the ministry of justice to establish a specialized public prosecution attorney for cybercrimes and computer misuse and now we have already put in place two public prosecution attorney to investigate and prosecute the cases of cybercrimes and computer misuse,” said Dr. Gabriel Isaac Awow, acting undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice.
The undersecretary stated that the court is meant to protect the public against misuse of the computer systems.
“[It] is established to defend the right of the people, the right of individuals, it is not established for any group of people. Everybody deserves the right to come here and submit his petition. If anything bad is written about on Facebook, WhatsApp, bring it, we will investigate it, analyse it and we will take it through technical processes to make sure we have handle it,” Isaac underscored.
He further mentioned that since South Sudan got its independence, there have been several cases of cyber crimes.
“People can communicate against other people whether socially or sexually. All these is being committed. People might distort the images of other people without ground, People might be taken trafficking from South Sudan to other countries through all these.”
“We want to tell people that the time of fighting, committing suicide or having unrest have gone. Now we have an era where anybody legally can get his right.” he said
In the case of blogs or social media pages that are managed by unknown individuals, the government said “the public prosecution attorneys who are here are trained and they will be going through another intensive and comprehensive training in the area of information technology. We will put in place the equipment, the facilities to detect who committed the crimes and who did not. We will have independent technology and satellite to have accurate results.”
The undersecretary also disclosed that the unit will have far reaching consequence for cyber crimes against South Sudan committed from abroad.
“A South Sudanese who commit a crimes abroad, we will be working with our international cooperation as provided by the law to sign instrument with the countries to make sure we bring those ones on board and bring them to South Sudan for trial.”
Cybercrimes and computer misuse provisional order 2021 states that who is found guilty of cybercrimes shall be sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from 3 years to 15 years based on nature of crimes committed, pay fines or both.
