Adil Faris Mayat, SSBC Director.

The Committee to Protect Journalist is calling for release of the detained director of national television.

The Director of the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation, Adil Faris Mayat, was reportedly detained by security apparatus the day after the sixth Independence Day anniversary.

The circumstances surrounding his detention are not known.

When contacted by Eye Radio this afternoon, Information Minister Makuei Lueth declined to comment on the matter.

But the Committee to Protect Journalist quotes Mayat’s wife, Amira Alnahawi, as saying that she believed security agents arrested her husband for failing to air a live state of the nation speech by the President on July 9.

“Which news to air or not air is not a decision for South Sudanese authorities to make or even to influence,” said CPJ Africa Program coordinator Angela Quintal in New York.

“We call on the government of President Salva Kiir to release Adil Faris Mayat immediately and allow the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation and all news outlets to do their work without political interference or fear of arrest.”