Christopher Allen, a British-American journalist, was shot dead near South Sudan’s borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, government and opposition forces spokespeople told CPJ.
Allen, 26, had been embedded with Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) rebels for two weeks at the time of his death, the group’s spokesperson Lam Paul Gabriel, told CPJ. Allen was one of 19 people killed when the rebels attacked the town of Kaya on the morning of August 26.
From 2013 to 2018, South Sudan was embroiled in a civil war sparked by clashes between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival Vice-President Riek Machar, who broke away from the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to form the SPLM-IO. The war ended with a peace agreement in 2018 and Machar returned to government but violence continues to flare between communities.
It is unclear whether government forces knew that Allen was a journalist.
In 2017, opposition spokesperson Gabriel, who had spoken with people who were present when Allen died, told CPJ that the journalist was deliberately targeted by government forces. South Sudanese army spokesperson Lul Ruai Koang denied that in an interview with CPJ and said the army had no way of identifying Allen as a journalist until after he had been killed.
On August 28, 2017, information minister Michael Makuei Lueth told the U.S.-Congress funded broadcaster Voice of America that Allen was a “white rebel” who came into South Sudan illegally after being denied entry on account of his “hostile reports.”
When he spoke with CPJ later in 2017, Lueth did not specify what these reports were and referred CPJ to the government’s Media Authority, which handles journalist visa requests. Its managing director Elijah Alier told CPJ that the authority had no records on Allen.
On August 30, 2017, Lueth told Voice of America that Allen’s death in the “course of his duty” was “regrettable” but he “was not targeted.”
The Columbia Journalism Review said in 2018 that it was “difficult to imagine” that soldiers “couldn’t have properly identified Allen, who carried two cameras and was snapping pictures until what may have been his last moment.” But it also cited a Ugandan intelligence official who said government soldiers told him that they “genuinely believed they had killed a mercenary fighting alongside the rebels.”
An April 2019 report by South Africa’s Mail & Guardian, which reviewed Allens’ autopsy report, said he was shot five times, in his neck, legs, and head. The newspaper spoke to two experts, one of whom said the nature of the shots suggested that they were “not ricochet, not an accidental wide spray of shots” while the second said the autopsy report was not conclusive. Army officers told the Mail & Guardian that they saw Allen taking pictures but thought he was a “white rebel that was filming.”
In an August 2019 statement, Doughty Street Chambers, a law firm acting on behalf of Allen’s family, called on the FBI to investigate two suspected war crimes, firstly, because of the way he was killed and secondly, the sharing online of photographs of Allen’s body, with his injuries and genitals exposed, shortly after his death.
The lawyers said evidence suggested that Allen was “deliberately targeted because he was a journalist taking photographs, and that this was not an accidental crossfire death.” It said that experts who had read the autopsy report thought that Allen was the victim of a “direct attack” and his killing was not “collateral damage.”
The FBI’s press office said in an email to CPJ that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation into Allen’s death.
In 2022, information minister Lueth repeated his comment about Allen being “a white rebel,” and asked whether South Sudanese authorities should investigate the former rebels who were now a part of the government.
On October 2, 2023, South Sudan formed a seven-member committee to investigate Allen’s death.
In its March 2024 report, the committee concluded that “Allen was not killed intentionally” but “was killed in cross-fire” when the SPLM-IO rebels attacked an army garrison.
It said that Allen had willingly chosen “to take the risk of his own life by being present in such a dangerous place” and there was no evidence that the “person or persons that discharged the firearms that caused his death” knew that he was a journalist.
The report did not include any interviews with eyewitnesses to Allen’s killing or SPLM-IO commanding officers who directed the operation in Kaya. It also said that Allen, who was present as preparations were being made, “encouraged” the rebels to attack.
In April 2024, the U.S. State Department said the government’s report did “not address in a comprehensive manner all the factors that led to Mr. Allen’s death or the disrespectful treatment of his remains” and called for a “credible investigation.”
In a May 2024 statement, Allen’s family condemned the report as having “no credibility” and for including information that was “blatantly wrong, contradicted by the autopsy report.” The family said that there had been no effort to include them in the investigations and the committee “ignored the requirement to investigate the treatment of Christopher’s body and dissemination of photographs of his body online.”
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Leiden University in the Netherlands, Allen’s reporting from Ukraine in 2015 was published by outlets including Vice, The Telegraph, and Al Jazeera.
His mother, Joyce Krajian, told Voice of America that Allen “chose to bear witness” through his journalism. He “chose to look unflinchingly at what was painful and see the humanity within it,” she said.