Rights group accuses UAE of being transit point for mercenaries on way to Sudan

According to HRW, the mercenaries were then trained in UAE military facilities in Ghiyathi and Al Wathba before covert deployment to war zones in Sudan where gross human rights violations such as mass extrajudicial killings, rape and gang rape, sexual slavery, looting and destruction of civilian infrastructure were allegedly committed.The RSF has faced particular international outrage following its violent capture of the city of el-Fasher last year. The United Nations Human Rights Office estimates that more than "6,000 were killed within the first three days of the RSF offensive"."In November and December 2025, six el-Fasher residents told Human Rights Watch they saw people they believed were Colombians in the city in October 2025, when mass killings were taking place," the HRW report states.A survivor detained by the RSF who is quoted in the report said he saw "foreign fighters" who "looked on silently" as RSF fighters opened fire on crowds. Another reported seeing "white fighters" alongside RSF fighters who killed three."They were there when the executions happened, but they didn't execute."RSF leader Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo last year declared an investigation into what he called violations committed by his soldiers during the capture of el-Fasher.The HRW report also says munitions belonging to the UAE armed forces were found after the capture of Colombian mercenaries inside Sudan. Some of the munitions were manufactured in Serbia and Bulgaria but purchased by the UAE, according to HRW.