Slidell man detained in South Sudan - News Banner

  A Slidell woman says she was supposed to celebrate her and her husband’s 25th wedding anniversary Wednesday but was unable to since Elton Mark McCabe remains detained in South Sudan on what has been deemed false allegations.

So far, international efforts to bring the man back to the United States have been unsuccessful. McCabe and his family live in the Country Club subdivision of Slidell and when “Mark” couldn’t find work locally; he sought a job overseas, Anne McCabe said.

Mark McCabe, who specializes in project management, had a massive heart attack last year in December and since that time has been unable to do much of the work he used to, his wife says.

A friend of McCabe’s, who happens to be an Iraqi native, persuaded him to work for some time in south Sudan, a landlocked and independent country in the heart of the African continent.

What made the father of three travel across the Atlantic was merely survival.

When Mark had his massive heart attack he couldn’t find a job; his friend said, well come here, “it’s like the gold rush,” Anne McCabe said.

“They have nothing there. The have zero. They don’t even have roads and we do all this kind of stuff,” the man told her husband.

“This is what they do—they can take nothing and make something (out of it) so he talked my husband into going to an investment summit there,” Anne McCabe said.

Nothing developed from the investment summit and so Mark McCabe headed home to the United States. He decided to head back, once again, to south Sudan on Aug. 8.

“They were getting ready to start an Internet company…help get an Internet company up and running,” said Anne McCabe, who speculates the country was not looking for Internet coverage whatsoever.

Anne McCabe says her husband was well aware of the dangers in South Sudan, but also says he would have never imagined it would come from the Sudanese government. On Oct. 14, Mark McCabe was arrested for supposedly being in connection with the kidnapping of an Indian businessman.  His wife received a call at 5 a.m. on the day of the arrest from the American Embassy in South Sudan.

“I’m like what…I said, ‘Are you serious.’ And then they even put something in there saying attempted murder, which is totally false. My husband is not capable of that and anybody who knows him knows he’s not capable of that. I mean he doesn’t even spank his grandbaby,” Anne McCabe said.

Even U.S. Sen. David Vitter has stated the allegations are completely false.

“Completely false accusations,” U.S. Sen. David Vitter told St. Tammany News partner WDSU. “We have very good relations with some very high level folks in the South Sudan government, including the ambassador, including the president, but this is a corrupt country, so there are all kinds of forces and power centers, even outside the government.”

“Why didn’t they just say, ‘we don’t want Internet, leave our country,” said Anne McCabe, who continues to seek answers.

My husband’s health cannot take this, she said.

According to Anne McCabe, her husband’s blood pressure was 170 over 100 when the Sudanese government finally allowed a doctor from the American Embassy to provide Mark McCabe with his heart medication.

“He said, ‘Only the thought of you and my family is what kept me alive,’” Anne McCabe said.

The last time I was able to talk to him it sounded like a concert was going on in the background and he said they’ve kept him in the dark and without his medication for five days, she said.

“He was on his way home and this happened. He could not have planned a kidnapping, or orchestrated it, when his medication was running out,” Anne McCabe said.

Anne McCabe received a letter from the state on Friday that says, “We remain extremely concerned about your husband’s health condition, the extra-judicial nature of his detention and the unacceptable manner in which this case was handled. We will continue to press the government of South Sudan for answers and due process for your husband.”

Elton Mark McCabe has been detained in South Sudan for 27 days.

Anne McCabe says she received an update on the matter Wednesday. He has been transported from the South Sudanese National Security Service location to a police facility really charged with no specific crime, she said.

Mark McCabe will now undergo arraignment on Nov. 22 and will be afforded due process but has to be represented by an attorney who is licensed to practice law in South Sudan, according to Anne McCabe.

“I have no information on the attorney who will represent my husband,” she said.

“They will have to charge him or let him go.”

Anne McCabe said the matter is really now in the hands of the Sudanese government, who she believes will do the right thing.

Wednesday was not how Anne McCabe expected to spend her anniversary…on the phone with relatives, friends and concerned bureaucrats looking for updates on her husband’s case.

“I expected to renew my vows in a church and have a get together after woods with family,” Anne McCabe said.