A resignation in South Sudan

The head of South Sudan's military courts has resigned in protest. According to this account by Reuters' Katharine Houreld, Khalid Ono Loki quit over high-level interference that made it impossible to prosecute cases. Excerpt:

In a letter addressed to the chief of army staff, Loki said soldiers were committing crimes without fear of punishment, particularly officers who were Dinka, the same tribe as the president and chief of army staff. 

"In your relentless endeavors to protect your own ethnicity, and founded on no single law, you always freeze and/or abolish court issuance and rulings even of murder, rape and theft cases," he wrote. 

"You have ordered arrests of civilians in military jails exterior of proper legal channels ... I can no longer continue with such a corrupt, ethicized and unethical institution."

Loki's resignation buttresses allegations by international rights groups that the government permits soldiers to gang-rape and murder civilians with impunity. The U.N. has documented hundreds of accusations of rape involving soldiers in the capital alone.

Postscript. A military justice brigadier general has also quit in protest, as reported here.