A probe into a deadly raid on a Khartoum protest camp on Saturday revealed that members of a feared Sudanese paramilitary group were involved in it, even as hundreds of demonstrators rallied to demand an independent investigation.
Shortly before dawn on June 3, gunmen in military fatigues raided the site of a weeks-long sit-in outside army headquarters, shooting and beating protesters in an operation that also left hundreds wounded.
Demonstrators and rights groups accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of carrying out the crackdown, a charge denied by the group’s chief General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
However, a joint probe by prosecutors and the ruling military council revealed that RSF paramilitaries were involved in the raid along with some members of other security forces.
Crowds of protesters had camped out at the site from April 6 onward, initially to seek the army’s support in toppling former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.
Al-Bashir was ousted on April 11, but protesters pressed on with the sit-in, demanding that the military council that replaced him cede power to civilians.
Fatah al-Rahman Saeed, a prosecutor who headed the investigation, said that orders had been given to security forces to clear an area called Colombia, near the protest camp.
However, an RSF general had separately ordered a colonel to disperse the sit-in, despite having no such order from further up the chain of command, he said.
“They led the forces ... inside the sit-in area and ordered them to get down from their vehicles and whip the protesters,” Saeed told reporters.
Saeed identified the RSF general who allegedly ordered the raid by his initials A.S.A., and the colonel as A.A.M.
“It is clear to the committee that General A.S.A issued an order to Colonel A.A.M to deploy anti-riot forces of the RSF” to break up the sit-in, Saeed said.
The country’s ruling generals have insisted they did not order the dispersal of the protest camp, but had ordered an operation including RSF and other security forces, limited to clearing Colombia, which they said was plagued by drug dealing and violence.
Saeed said an RSF captain, identified as H.B.A, was involved in clearing Colombia, but later took part in dispersing the sit-in.
He said another group of security personnel, also involved in clearing Colombia, “disobeyed orders and entered the sit-in area.”
They “removed barricades, fired tear gas and fired intense and random bullets that led to the killing and wounding of protesters and the burning of tents,” Saeed said, adding that a total of eight officers were involved in the raid.
Days after the raid, rights group Amnesty International said that members of “RSF are responsible for ... the ongoing bloody crackdown on protesters in Khartoum since June 3.”
Hundreds of protesters on Saturday rallied in parts of Khartoum even as riot police fired tear gas to disperse some, an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported.
Later the same day, the protest group Sudanese Professionals Association said it rejected the probe “at the procedural level.”
“It was commissioned by the [ruling] military council, this is challenging its integrity as the military council itself is accused in this case,” said the group, which first launched protests against al-Bashir in December last year.
Demanding that an independent probe be held, the association insisted that the accused be identified by their full names, rather than by their initials.
“The commission has come up with flawed and incomplete statistics for martyrs, victims and wounded,” it said.
Doctors linked to the protest movement said 127 people were killed during the raid, but Saeed gave a lower toll on Saturday.
He said that 17 people were killed on June 3, while a total of 87 died between that day and June 10.
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