AP reporter deported from South Sudan
JOHANNESBURG — Government agents ordered a journalist working for The Associated Press out of South Sudan on Tuesday, taking him to the airport in Juba and putting him aboard a flight to Uganda.
Justin Lynch, an American freelance journalist who had reported on human rights violations in the violence-plagued nation for the past six months, said he was arrested by members of South Sudan’s National Security Service who temporarily seized his mobile phones and allowed him to pack a bag.
The agents told him only that he was being deported for his journalistic work, Lynch said after arriving in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
Lynch, 25, from Saratoga, New York, has been working for AP in South Sudan since July. He recently reported on evidence of ethnic violence in the country and on the warning by a U.N. official that South Sudan is at risk of genocide.