RSF imprisons thousands in Khartoum, hundreds die – UN rights office
March 6, 2025 (GENEVA) – The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has imprisoned over 10,000 people in detention centres in Sudan’s Khartoum state, where hundreds have died from torture and disease, the United Nations human rights office said on Thursday.
The U.N. office released a report covering the period from April 15, 2023, to the end of June 2024, detailing human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law in detention facilities run by both the RSF and the Sudanese army in Khartoum.
The report, seen by Sudan Tribune, said the “OHCHR corroborated information about the existence of and detention practices in 39 RSF-controlled places of detention where, for the period covered by this report, an estimated 10,000 individuals were being detained.”
It noted that Soba Prison is the RSF’s largest detention center, followed by a complex in Riyadh, east of Khartoum. Various other buildings were used as detention facilities, including residential buildings, government headquarters, police stations, schools, a court, two universities, a kindergarten, a shop, a factory, and three military bases, it added.
The report stated that detention facilities are located across Khartoum state’s three main cities: 17 in Khartoum, 13 in Bahri, and 9 in Omdurman. It added the RSF operates more detention sites than the office was able to confirm.
Grave violations
The U.N. human rights office said the report’s findings revealed serious violations committed by the army and the RSF in detention facilities in Khartoum, where both sides engaged in the arbitrary, indefinite detention of civilians without charge.
Detainees were subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including beatings and electric shocks, the report found, adding that detention facilities run by both sides are severely overcrowded and poorly ventilated.
Lack of food and water in RSF facilities led to malnutrition and preventable deaths, while denial of healthcare resulted in high death rates from untreated illnesses and injuries, it said.
The U.N. rights office said the army and the RSF had detained children, and detention based on ethnicity and torture were widespread in detention sites of both parties.
“Detainees are often held incommunicado, without records or notification to their families, while psychological torture, death threats, and forced labour – including transporting military supplies under harsh conditions – were widespread in RSF facilities,” the report stated.
The report drew on monitoring operations conducted by the U.N. human rights office and interviews with 34 people affected by detention in Khartoum state (31 men and three women), 29 former detainees, and five other witnesses, family members, and victims.
Torture, humiliation
The report said the RSF uses a systematic approach to detention, starting at checkpoints where civilians are stopped, interrogated, and often subjected to physical torture before being transferred to temporary detention sites.
One detainee said he was detained at a checkpoint near his home, where RSF members entered the house, interrogated his family, and then blindfolded and handcuffed him.
He was transferred through a series of checkpoints, where at each stop, he was handed over to a new group of RSF members who beat him severely, accused him of affiliation with the army, and searched his phone.
Another said the RSF detained about 40 people, including women and children, at a checkpoint near a hospital south of Khartoum, ordered them to kneel, beat them with whips, and confiscated their belongings.
The U.N. rights office said it received reports of the RSF detaining women in transit facilities and detention centres. Children as young as two were detained alongside their mothers, it added.
“In many detention centres, children were reportedly detained alongside adult men. The office received eyewitness testimony of sexual violence against women in a detention centre in Jebel Awliya, south of Khartoum, and exploitation in a centre in Al-Ma’moura, east of Khartoum,” it said.
Several detainees were quoted as saying the RSF deliberately deprived them of food, water, and healthcare as part of a broader strategy of humiliation.
Extrajudicial executions
The report said the RSF systematically used torture and ill-treatment in the Riyadh complex, where detainees face mock executions, severe beatings, and discriminatory treatment based on ethnicity or alleged army affiliation.
One detainee said RSF members “would spray detainees with urine from buckets in the cell whenever their forces suffered a defeat by the army.”
The report revealed incidents in which detainees were subjected to mass beatings and ill-treatment in Soba Prison, east of Khartoum, as punishment for alleged involvement in escape attempts.
“In August 2023 and January 2024, detainees who attempted to escape from Soba Prison were summarily executed, and the rest were denied food for two days, leading to increased deaths from malnutrition,” it said.
The U.N. refugee agency said that the number of detainees held by the RSF in Soba Prison reached more than 6,000 by the end of June 2024, including civilians and both serving and retired army personnel.
The RSF deployed children as young as 14 to work as armed guards inside detention sites, especially Soba Prison, the report said.
Forced labour, deaths
The office said it had documented incidents in which detainees were forced to transport bodies, looted goods, and food supplies from RSF-controlled areas.
The RSF deliberately gave detainees in Soba Prison meagre food rations and limited, contaminated water, leading to widespread malnutrition, weight loss, and weakened immune systems, the report said.
Bodies are collected in the prison clinic and then taken away by truck, it added.
The U.N. human rights office confirmed the existence of seven army-run detention facilities in Khartoum, all military bases.
Victims’ accounts show the army detained civilians incommunicado for long periods, denied them basic rights, and tortured them with beatings using water hoses, rifle butts, and electric shocks, the report said.
Detainees from Darfur and Kordofan were subjected to more severe and prolonged torture, it added.