When Magai Matiop Ngong was 15 he loved running and gospel singing. He was in secondary school and had ambitions to help people when he grew up. But life as he knew it came to a sudden end in 2017 when he was convicted of murder. At his trial he told the judge that he was only 15 and tried to explain that the killing he was accused of was an accident.
But the judge sentenced him to death by hanging. “The feeling is not good at all,” he says, “to be informed that you are going to die, I am not happy for that…”.

Magai didn’t have a lawyer to help him when he was arrested or in his first trial. The judge told him he could write an appeal to ask for his death sentence to be cancelled. He only got a lawyer when he moved prisons. Last year, seven people were hanged in South Sudan: one of them, like Magai, was just a child. 

Two years after his sentence, Magai is on death row in Juba central prison waiting for his appeal but he hasn’t lost his “hope…to be out and to continue… school.” Tell South Sudan to cancel Magai’s death sentence.

PLEASE WRITE TO THE SOUTH SUDANESE AUTHORITIES

Ask them to cancel Magai’s death sentence.

The President of South Sudan
Twitter: @RepSouthSudan /
@PresSalva