Tens of thousands of civilians fled El Fasher in North Darfur, Sudan, after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured the city and carried out indiscriminate killings of hundreds on Sunday amid a 500-day siege. Photo by Marwan Mohamed/EPA
Several alleged executioners have been arrested after the Rapid Support Forces killed hundreds of Sudanese men, women and children in an El Fasher hospital this week, the paramilitary group announced Friday.
RSF officials said they arrested Abu Lulu and others who are accused of carrying out the indiscriminate killings of hundreds in the El Fasher hospital and elsewhere and provided a video of Lulu being arrested and led to a jail cell, The Guardian reported.
Those arrested were jailed and under heavy guard in the Shala prison near the western boundary of El Fasher, according to the BBC.
Lulu is an RSF commander and was among those shown killing civilians during the RSF attack on El Fasher, which is the capital of the North Darfur state in southwestern Sudan.
Satellite images and videos that have been verified as authentic show evidence of mass killings carried out as RSF forces went door to door in El Fasher and killed civilians, ABC News reported.
Video footage of Sunday’s killings shows Lulu laughing at men who were begging to be spared immediately prior to Lulu executing them, according to BBC Verify.
The announcement of the arrest of Lulu and others were met with skepticism, and video footage shows him appearing to be relaxed while being transported to a local prison.
“The detention of Abu Lulu appears to be a [public relations] stunt to deflect global anger and shift attention away from the militia’s responsibility for this massacre,” Sudanese researcher and writer Mohamed Sulimen told The Guardian.
“However, many Sudanese did not buy into this and launched a hashtag: ‘You are all Abu lulu,’ meaning the entire militia acts like him,” Sulimen added.
Images also have been posted on social media that show several RSF leaders, including Mohamed Hamdan Dagal aka Hemedti and politicians who are aligned with him, with “Abu Lulu” displayed beneath each of their faces.
Applying the Abu Lulu tags to their faces suggests they are just like him, and investigators with the Centre for Information Resilience.
The United Nations on Thursday said nearly 500 patients and those with them were killed at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, which was among several medical facilities that the RSF targeted during the fighting.
El Fasher has “descended into an even darker hell,” senior U.N. officials said on Thursday.
Tens of thousands fled the city on foot as mass executions, rape and starvation occurred, according to the United Nations.
The RSF laid siege to El Fasher for more than 500 days as the Sudanese Armed Forces maintained its hold on the Sudanese government’s last stronghold in Darfur amid a civil war with the RSF.
