Sudan rebels’ video posts ‘could be used in war crimes trials’
Footage of rebel fighters in Sudan appearing to glorify the burning of homes and the torture of prisoners could be used by international courts to pursue war crime prosecutions, observers have said.
Fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, have been accused of waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing as they try to take control of the country.
region of Darfur, fighters appear to have filmed and posted evidence of their actions on social media. Self-incriminating footage has been verified by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR).
The footage could become evidence for war crimes investigators, say observers, after the international criminal court put out a call for submissions of visual and audio evidence from Darfur last year.
“It’s someone condemning themselves. It’s not the same as a guilty plea but in some ways it is a big piece of the puzzle that war crimes investigators have to put together,” said Alexa Koenig, a co-creator of the Berkeley Protocol, setting out an international standard for using social media to investigate war crimes.
More than 10,000 people – mostly from the African Masalit ethnic community – died in the Darfur city of El Geneina during two periods of intense fighting in 2023. A UN investigation later discovered a mass grave of dozens of Masalit civilians allegedly killed by the RSF.
A video shared by a pro-RSF account on X in June 2023 during the takeover of the city shows a fighter standing in front of the house of the sultan of Masalit saying: “There are no more Masalit … Arabs only.”
Experts say footage of atrocities sometimes circulates among a small group before being leaked, but on some occasions it is intentionally shared widely in order to intimidate potential future victims.
who they are,” said Adam Mousa Obama, from Darfur Victim Support.