ALBAWABA - Online footage posted on social media showed Rapid Support Forces fighters glorifying crimes committed against civilians, including torture and burning homes, a report by The Guardian revealed.
Viewed and verified by both The Guardian and Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), RSF fighters posted videos of their crimes on social media platforms, which is believed to be self-incriminating evidence against their horrifying actions.
The paramilitary group fighters have been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing campaigns as they continue to seize control of towns and cities across Sudan since the war waged in April 2023.
Experts say that the online footage could be damning evidence for war crimes investigators, following the International Criminal Court's call for prosecutors to submit visual and audio evidence from Darfur last year.
More than 10,000 people were killed in the Darfur city of El Geneina during two episodes of heavy battles in 2023, the majority of them were members of the African Masalit ethnic minority.
A UN investigation eventually revealed a mass grave including dozens of Masalit members purportedly killed by the RSF.
During the June 2023 seizure of Masalit, a pro-RSF user published a video on X showing a fighter standing in front of the sultan's residence, declaring "There are no more Masalit … Arabs only".
Alessandro Accorsi, a senior analyst stated: "We’re in a situation where abusers are filming themselves, giving us evidence of what’s happening when we don’t have much information generally,".
Anouk Theunissen, from CIR’s Sudan Witness project, said they had collected and verified thousands of open-sourced footage so far to provide information and data for future efforts to hold perpetrators to account, The Guardian report reads.
