The minister of defense has denied testimonies attributed to him in the report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry into the South Sudan conflict.

Lt-Gen Kuol Manyang Juk is said to have told the inquiry that President Salva Kiir recruited and armed some youth who participated in the killings that followed the outbreak of the conflict in Juba.

The report says gross human rights violations, including targeting civilians based on their ethnicity, were committed in Juba in mid-December 2013.

Gen Manyang says the testimonies attributed to him by the report are untrue.

“This is not true,” he said. “What I said is that – because they asked of recruits, people that we brought to Juba in the eve of the incident – I told them that during the war of Heglig in 2012, the government of South Sudan and the army asked all the states to recruit for the war; therefore, some of the states responded. The young people volunteered for the war like any other country.”