A leading Sudanese human rights organisation says General al-Burhan’s forces (SAF) and state security agencies are torturing detainees to death and running “execution chambers.”
Emergency Lawyers said it had documented hundreds of arrests in Khartoum since SAF retook the capital from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in March, amid a civil war that has killed tens of thousands in two years. In the worst cases, the group said, detainees were later found dead with signs of torture.
SAF did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
The group, which has chronicled abuses by all sides throughout the conflict, said on X it had observed a “dangerous escalation in violations.” Some people were allegedly seized at random and taken to large detention centres, where outcomes ranged from prolonged detention in “inhumane” conditions to trials by security bodies “lacking basic standards of justice,” or release in poor health. “In the worst cases, some are found dead after being killed or declared dead as a result of torture,” it added.
In March, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan said both sides were responsible for “a widespread pattern of arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment of detainees,” and that both the SAF and its rivals had used “rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as torture and ill-treatment.”
The conflict has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises: about 12 million people have been displaced and famine has been declared in parts of the country. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says the war has fuelled Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years, with nearly 100,000 cases and 2,470 deaths over the past year.
