PHILADELPHIA _ A 2007 La Salle University graduate has been arrested in South Sudan and taken to one of the country's most notorious prisons.
Peter Biar Ajak was detained by national security forces while boarding a plane in Juba, the capital, and has been in custody for two to three days.
Though largely unknown in the United States, in other nations Ajak is a prominent political activist who has called for a new generation of leaders to run the African country of South Sudan, which is beset by civil war, poverty and corruption.
"We must stop thinking that the so-called leaders will bring peace to South Sudan," he said in a recent Twitter post. "We, the great people of South Sudan, must organize ourselves to bring about the peace we deserve!"
Ajak was one of the "Lost Boys," the nickname given to some 40,000 children who were displaced or orphaned during a previous Sudanese civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2005. For years, he and others wandered hundreds of miles, trading one refugee camp for another. He came to the United States in 2001, and lived in the Philadelphia area.
"He was a super-active leader on campus, beloved by a large group of us," said Aaron Spence, a friend who graduated with Ajak in 2007. "A lot of people on campus are affected by what's happening to him."
Spence said on Monday that he has been communicating with Ajak's family. They said they were allowed to speak with him for 30 minutes. He has not been tortured or questioned, they said.
He remains in custody at the headquarters of the South Sudan National Security Service, a place known as the Blue House for its tinted windows.
Political detainees there face torture, starvation or death, the Associated Press reported in 2016. Amnesty International has documented cases of prisoners being tortured with knives, and beaten with belts and bamboo sticks.
Ajak has been living in Kenya while speaking out against the South Sudanese government and working as an activist, Spence said.
La Salle University tweeted that the community's thoughts and prayers are with Ajak, and people are hoping for his safe release. Friends have mounted an awareness campaign on social media under the #FreePeterBiar hashtag.
He came to Philadelphia as an unaccompanied minor, going through courses to learn basic English and figure out how to navigate the city. He later entered La Salle through its Academic Discovery Program, which provides support services for students who could benefit from extra academic assistance.
He excelled at La Salle and became involved in the university's newspaper and political and economic associations, the profile said. He credited the school's Catholic values and virtues as cementing his sense of purpose.
"It made it something concrete that I could feel, something that I could connect to every single day," he said. "Being a Lost Boy taught me how cruel and tough life could be. However, at the same time, it taught me what a difference the individual could make in the larger scheme."
Ajak is chairman of the South Sudan Young Leaders Forum, the Red Army Foundation, and NxGeneration of South Sudan. He earned a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and was studying for a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England at the time of his arrest.
He was the first person from South Sudan to study at Cambridge, where he was involved in the African Society of Cambridge University, a report from the university said.
He worked as a World Bank economist based in South Sudan, advising the government on economic policy and development, according to the International Growth Centre in London, where he was a senior adviser. He also founded South Sudan Wrestling Entertainment, a firm that uses South Sudanese indigenous wrestling to promote peace and reconciliation, according to the Centre.
"Life is a gift, but I also believe that there's a duty to it," Ajak told La Salle Magazine in a 2016 profile of him and his work. "To have access to so much opportunity means you have to be responsible for other things."
