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“We Raped Your Daughter and Wife in Front of You. You Are Not a Man”: Samer Osman Recounts How a Sudanese Officer Died of Anguish Inside a UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia Detention Centre In a harrowing video testimony, Samer Osman recounts one of the most painful incidents he witnessed inside a detention centre operated by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Militia in Khartoum. His account centres on a captured Sudanese officer lying on the floor with his hands tightly bound behind his back. According to Osman, a militia member named Abdullah stood before the prisoner and told him: “We raped your daughter and your wife in front of you. Where is your manhood now?” The man laughed and boasted about what he said they had done before telling the bound officer: “You are not a man.” When the officer heard those words, he tried to reach Abdullah despite the restraints holding his hands behind his back. He threw his body forward with whatever strength he had left, falling from side to side as he struggled to stand, defend himself or reach the man boasting about the rape of his family. Abdullah then kicked him in the stomach and face as he lay bound on the ground, and walked away. The words were more painful than the kicks. Osman said the other detainees became enraged when they heard the taunt. They were watching a helpless man being psychologically destroyed while his tormentor laughed and used the reported rape of his wife and daughter to humiliate him. Militia guards opened the detention-cell door and fired at the prisoners, killing eleven of them, according to Osman’s testimony. Eleven men died. Yet Osman said that, at that moment, even the pain of their deaths felt less devastating than the words Abdullah had spoken. Every prisoner understood what the militia was doing. It was attacking the officer’s body, dignity, memory and family at the same time, turning his wife and daughter into instruments of torture and leaving him trapped with the image of them in the hands of men who boasted about abusing them. The officer remained bound in the same position. For three days, he kept his head lowered to the ground and refused food and water. The detainees gave him portions of their meagre food and scarce water, brought the plate close to his face, surrendered their own rations and tried to feed him with their hands. He turned his head away and spat out the food, even when they placed it in his mouth. They remained thirsty so that he could have their water. The other prisoners gathered around a man overwhelmed by trauma and pleaded with him to eat, drink and speak. A religious elder named Sheikh Ali repeatedly came to him, reminding him of God and speaking about faith, goodness and the Quran, trying to hold on to his spirit before it slipped away. After three days, the officer finally said: “I just want to breathe.” Some detainees removed their torn shirts and used them to fan him. They offered him water, and he took one sip before saying that he wanted no more. Osman urged him to speak: “My brother, please talk. Let out what is inside you. Try.” The officer raised his head, looked at him with bloodshot eyes and said: “Leave me alone, everyone. Please, leave me alone.” Then he gave the detainees his final instruction: “Whoever among you gets out alive, I entrust him with seeking justice for my wife and daughter.” When the time came for Fajr, the Muslim dawn prayer, they tried to lift him into a position in which he could pray. The militia had refused to remove his restraints from the moment he was brought into the detention centre. They lifted him upright, and he collapsed onto his right side. They tried to support him again, but he could no longer hold himself up. One prisoner held him while another religious elder, Sheikh Khalid, came to help. “He has become heavy,” Sheikh Khalid said. He touched the officer and then told the others: “May God have mercy on him.” The man died bound at dawn. According to Osman, the officer died from overwhelming anguish and oppression, left alone with the image of his wife and daughter and what the militia member claimed had been done to them. At the time the testimony was recorded, Osman said the detainees still did not know whether the two women were alive, whether the militia had killed them or what had happened to them. The reported rape and their fate remain part of Osman’s testimony, with no independent information available to confirm the details. Osman’s account illuminates the wider system of torture established by the Rapid Support Militia across Khartoum. The militia converted civilian buildings, schools and military facilities into detention centres where prisoners described beatings, starvation, humiliation, psychological torture and executions. It left behind emaciated survivors, burial sites and thousands of families still searching for missing relatives. In March 2025, the Guardian published an investigation from a former militia base near the village of Garri, approximately 70 kilometres north of Khartoum, after the Sudanese military recaptured the site. Journalists found a previously unknown detention centre with shackles hanging from doors, apparent punishment chambers and bloodstains on the floor. Nearby, they discovered an extensive burial ground containing at least 550 unmarked graves, some of which appeared to contain more than one body. The newspaper reported that more than 500 people may have been tortured or starved to death before being buried there. Doctors examined 135 civilians rescued from the detention centre and found widespread signs of torture and chronic malnutrition. Some survivors were unable to walk and had to be carried outside, while many were too traumatised to speak. Satellite imagery showed that the graves appeared after the militia seized the base, and a Human Rights Watch expert said the site could constitute one of the largest atrocity crime scenes discovered in Sudan since the war began. Read the Guardian investigation The Guardian later reported the story of Alwaleed Abdeen, a 35-year-old Sudanese entrepreneur held for six months inside a school that the militia had converted into a prison in Jebel Aulia, south of Khartoum. In the last video recorded after his rescue, Abdeen was so emaciated that his friends struggled to recognise him even after he spoke his name. His bones were visible beneath his skin after months of starvation and torture, and he later died in hospital. Read the Guardian report on Alwaleed Abdeen The individual incident described by Osman still requires an independent investigation, yet its details fit a documented pattern that emerged as the militia was driven from extensive areas of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri: secret detention centres, starvation, restraints, beatings, humiliation, deaths in custody and burial grounds beside the places where prisoners were tortured. Those responsible for such acts have stripped themselves of every trace of humanity. Armed thugs were transformed into a military and political project through the continued flow of weapons, money and foreign logistical support. Over the course of Sudan’s war, hundreds of reports, investigations, documented materials, UN findings and official assessments have built an extensive, cumulative record of multifaceted Emirati support for the Rapid Support Militia. This evidence has drawn on flight data, satellite imagery, weapons and ammunition analysis, export documentation, commercial records and witness testimony. Together, these sources have revealed a support system involving weapons, ammunition, drones, military vehicles, financing, logistics, training networks and foreign mercenaries, alongside political, diplomatic and media support that helped the militia sustain its war and crimes against the Sudanese people. The UAE has repeatedly denied providing military support to the militia. This testimony also provides a clear answer to those who try to manufacture a divide between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudanese people. Army officers are part of the Sudanese people, drawn from the same homes, neighbourhoods, towns and villages. They and their families have endured the same killings, detention, torture, displacement and abuses inflicted on civilians, and in many cases have faced additional targeting because of their military service. That officer was a Sudanese man, a husband and a father before every other title, and his tragedy formed part of the tragedy of an entire nation. Osman’s testimony also answers a question often asked by those who struggle to understand why Sudanese people continue to fight and mobilise in defence of their cities and homeland. The answer lies inside that detention centre. People fight because they have seen what the Janjaweed, the militias from which the Rapid Support Militia emerged, did when they seized neighbourhoods, homes and the bodies of civilians. They fight so that another bound man will never have to face someone boasting about raping his wife and daughter. They mobilise so that schools do not become prisons, football fields do not become graveyards, homes do not become military barracks, and women are never again used as instruments for torturing their husbands and fathers. After all this, some advocates of political settlements continue asking Sudanese people to negotiate with the militia’s commanders and grant them a new position in government. The meaning of such a proposal is clear: reward armed men for what they have done and return the tormentor to power over his victims through a political agreement. Negotiations can serve specific purposes, including ending the fighting, securing the militia’s disarmament, releasing detainees, determining the fate of the disappeared, opening burial sites to investigation and holding those responsible accountable. A settlement that preserves the militia’s army, influence and share of political power would amount to political surrender before a project built through killing, rape, torture and humiliation. The Sudanese people reject any military or political role for this militia in the country’s future government. That rejection will endure however long the road becomes, even if the war continues for years, because allowing the militia to remain within the state would leave every Sudanese family living under the threat of the detention cell, the torturer and the mass grave. Osman addressed the officer who had died in restraints: “By God, as you lie in your grave, your daughter and wife have been avenged many times over.” Those words carry the pain of a survivor and the anger of an entire people. The justice Sudan needs begins with defeating the militia’s project, disarming it, holding its commanders and perpetrators accountable, confronting those who armed it, and ensuring that it never returns to rule Sudanese people under any name or political settlement. #Sudan #RSFisTerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanesePeople #UAESponsorsTerrorism