The Sudan People’s Liberation Army military intelligence faction arrested a former cabinet minister at gunpoint on suspicion that he may have been carrying some money to bribe youth from the Equatoria region to join the rebellion.

Luka Biong Deng, a senior member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and now a scholar, was detained for more than five hours before being released after the investigation found “he had no money” at his disposal to substantiate the suspicion.

“I was arrested, detained, deported from Yei with my properties sought and seized, not by police or national security service, but by the Military Intelligence of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA),” he wrote. He was in Yei conducting research on institution strengthening in South Sudan.

Deng was the cabinet affairs minister in the Sudanese government, but resigned in protest in 2011 after the military takeover of his native Abyei region.

Read Deng’s full account here.