A court in Sudan has handed down a death sentence in absentia against the leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, along with 15 other individuals, for their involvement in the June 2023 murder of the governor of West Darfur, Jamis Abakar, as well as for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, in the context of the war that began in April 2023.
The judicial process has focused on the death of Abakar, which occurred shortly after the RSF took control of Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, in the early stages of the conflict. United Nations experts have indicated that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were murdered in this city, mostly members of the Masalit community.
The Anti-Terrorism and State Crimes Court of Port Sudan has declared that both the RSF leader, known as "Hemedti," and the rest of the defendants are responsible for "crimes against humanity," emphasizing that the atrocities were committed "as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, under a coordinated plan aimed at exterminating an ethnic group."
Judge Mohamed al Amin has detailed that "women, children, the elderly, and the sick were murdered inside hospitals" and has remarked that Abakar was executed while in custody. He also indicated that the RSF's crimes in Darfur "were motivated by ethnic hatred against the Masalit community," according to information disseminated by the Sudanese state news agency, SUNA.
Al Amin has denounced that "the forces that committed these crimes used heavy weaponry in residential neighborhoods, mutilated bodies, looted, set fires, raped, and forced displacements in extremely precarious humanitarian conditions," and added that the defendants also participated in "deliberate destruction of infrastructure."
In the same vein, he has stressed that the convicted "were state leaders who abused their authority and used state weapons, intended to protect citizens, to commit crimes." "These actions caused the murder and displacement of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire city, and the devastation of its civilization and history," he concluded.
The sentence, issued by a court acting under the authority of the Army, represents the first ruling of its kind since the outbreak of the conflict. Among those convicted are also a brother of "Hemedti" and the "number two" of the RSF, Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, along with other high-ranking commanders of the paramilitary group and tribal leaders from Arab communities in West Darfur.
The conflict broke out in April 2023 due to deep disagreements over the integration plan of the RSF into the Armed Forces, which derailed the political transition opened after the 2019 overthrow of the Omar Hassan al-Bashir regime, already weakened after the coup that deposed the then-prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok.