Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim to have arrested several of their fighters after outrage over the extent of killing in the city of El Fasher continues to build.
But the paramilitary group’s move has been greeted with scepticism from human rights campaigners and Sudanese people, who see it as an attempt to temper criticism over the violence.
Much of the outrage has been focused on one individual, Abu Lulu, whom RSF media outlets showed under arrest and taken to a jail cell. Abu Lulu, a commander in the RSF, featured in numerous videos that emerged after Sunday’s attack on El Fasher of fighters executing people in civilian clothing.
“The detention of Abu Lulu appears to be a PR stunt to deflect global anger and shift attention away from the militia’s responsibility for this massacre,” said Mohamed Suliman, a Sudanese researcher and writer based in Boston. “However, many Sudanese did not buy into this and launched a hashtag: ‘You are all Abu Lulu’ – meaning the entire militia acts like him.”
Since the fighter’s arrest, images have been shared on social media of various RSF leaders, including the chief, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, as well as politicians considered to be linked to him, with the name Abu Lulu written underneath each of their faces.
Open-source investigators the Centre for Information Resilience said they had verified images that showed Hemedti’s brother and deputy, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, was present in El Fasher during the attacks.
Hala al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese activist focusing on violence against women with the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, said the focus on arresting one man was a “painful joke” intended to deflect from the scale of the violence inflicted by RSF forces in El Fasher and elsewhere.
“There is absence of accountability and indifference to our humanity. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have perished daily, and young girls and women have been ruthlessly raped during the past three years. Still, all they do is try to silence our suffering,” she said.
Karib said the RSF could not be trusted to investigate itself, saying it had not changed since its origins as a collection of ethnic-based militias known as the Janjaweed, who carried out massacres in Darfur during the 2000s on behalf of the Sudanese government.
A civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese army began in April 2023 after a power struggle between the two forces and the conflict quickly spread across the country.
Karib said that when the former president Omar al-Bashir was imprisoned after being ousted during protests in 2019, the military-led transitional government that took power was not trusted internationally to hold Bashir accountable for crimes committed in Darfur during the 2000s and there was pressure to hand him over to the international criminal court, where he faced charges of genocide.
Karib said: “The international community did not trust the Sudanese government during the transition to prosecute al-Bashir. You want us to give RSF/Janjaweed credibility? This is a mockery.”
Shayna Lewis, a Sudan specialist at Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities, which works closely with Sudanese civil society, said previous investigations the RSF had claimed it would launch after serious violations had not resulted in any form of accountability.
“This tactic by the RSF is a diversion,” she said. “They’re attempting to show that the massacres on the ground are the work of a few rogue soldiers rather than a systematic policy of genocide, which we have seen since the very earliest days of the war, committed by the RSF, particularly in Darfur. These claims of accountability run hollow. It’s a farce.”
The UN human rights office spokesperson, Seif Magango, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters could have been killed while trying to leave El Fasher.
He said: “Witnesses confirm RSF personnel selected women and girls and raped them at gunpoint, forcing the remaining displaced persons – around 100 families – to leave the location amid shooting and intimidation of older residents.”
A survivor from El Fasher, who spoke to reporters at a press conference organised by SIHA, said the RSF attacked with heavy artillery while its fighters shot at civilians and looted their homes.
“Some of my brothers were killed in front of me. I don’t where my mother or father are, I don’t know where my little sister is,” he said.
He said he managed to escape El Fasher in the evening but saw corpses of civilians lying along the side of the route to Tawila. Some had track marks from where cars had driven over them. “There was another group of civilians behind us but they were taken by the RSF. They were tortured, whipped and vehicles rolled over them. The RSF are merciless,” he said.
The World Health Organization confirmed reports that at least 460 patients were killed in several attacks on the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher.
A spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier, said six health care workers were taken in the first attack on the hospital. Soldiers then returned twice and “finished off what was still standing, including other people sheltering in hospital”.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 60,000 people were displaced from El Fasher and nearby areas between 26 and 29 October.
There is concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people after Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) raised alarm about only a few thousand arriving in the Tawila displacement camp west of El Fasher, which has previously been a key destination for displaced people in the area.
“[The arrivals are] far fewer than the 250,000 civilians estimated to be in El Fasher until last month. Reports from those who fled, as well as credible sources, indicate mass killings, indiscriminate violence and ethnic targeting inside the city and on the roads to escape it,” MSF said.
MSF added that 100% of children under five, who are all being screened as they arrived, were malnourished.
“They are victims of torture, gunshots on the road, travelling by night, they were forced in El Fasher to eat animal feed, which has caused really bad abdominal problems, especially in children,” said Giulia Chiopris, an MSF paediatrician in Tawila. “Our surgical teams are working non-stop.”
An activist who fled to Tawila after the RSF’s attack on the Zamzam displacement camp in April said those who had arrived had to walk for at least two days. “Many men were killed and some women were tortured,” he said. “Everyone is ill or injured.”
Sudanese civil society groups have reported that displaced families are also arriving in nearby villages in north Darfur.
