A high-stakes conspiracy to overthrow the South Sudanese government has ended in federal prison for two men who tried to smuggle millions of dollars in U.S. weaponry out of the country. Peter Biar Ajak, a 42-year-old Maryland resident, was sentenced this week by U.S. District Judge Sharad H. Desai to 46 months behind bars.
His partner in the plot, 46-year-old Abraham Chol Keech of Utah, had already received a 41-month sentence back in December. Both men will face three years of supervised release once they finish their terms.
The duo admitted in court that they spent over a year, from early 2023 to March 2024, trying to build a private arsenal to fuel a revolution. Their shopping list was staggering: ten Stinger missile systems, hundreds of grenade launchers, over a thousand rifles, and a massive cache of 3.5 million rounds of ammunition.
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The total value of the hardware topped $4 million. Federal prosecutors revealed that Ajak didn’t just want to supply the weapons; he intended to use the resulting chaos to install himself as the new president of South Sudan.
Government officials noted that the men were fully aware they were breaking the law. Because South Sudan is under a strict arms embargo, the defendants went to great lengths to hide their tracks.
They reportedly discussed paying off officials and even tried to pass off their military spending as “humanitarian aid” to trick banks. They even went as far as creating fake invoices to mask where their money was coming from.
Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg characterized the plot as a direct threat to national security, noting that Ajak operated right out of the D.C. suburbs while planning his power grab.
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Law enforcement agencies, including HSI Arizona and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, worked together to kill the deal before the weapons could leave American soil.
In addition to their prison time, the men had to cough up nearly $2 million in seized funds that they had raised to pay for the weapons. Officials emphasized that stopping these illegal transfers is vital to making sure U.S. military technology doesn’t end up being used against American forces or innocent civilians in overseas conflicts.
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