A Sudanese court has passed the heaviest sentence it can on the man at the centre of the country’s devastating civil war. An anti-terrorism court in Port Sudan has convicted Rapid Support Forces leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – known as Hemedti – of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur, and sentenced him to death.
The fact that Sudan sentences Hemedti to death is historic: it is the first judicial conviction of the RSF’s top leadership since the war erupted in April 2023. Yet it is also, for now, largely symbolic. Hemedti was tried in absentia, his whereabouts are unknown, and his forces still control much of western Sudan, placing him and his co-defendants far beyond the reach of the court that condemned them.
The verdict therefore sits in an uneasy space – a formal reckoning for some of the war’s worst atrocities, handed down by one side in that war, against men who remain free and armed. It is worth understanding both what the court found and why its force is, for now, more moral than practical.
The Ruling
The court, presided over by special judge Mohamed al-Amin, sentenced Hemedti and 15 other defendants to death in absentia. Among them were two of his brothers – RSF deputy leader Abdel Rahim Hamdan Dagalo and Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa – along with the RSF’s West Darfur commander, Abdul Rahman Juma Barkallah, and a former state deputy governor.
The charges centred on the 2023 siege of el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, and the killing of the state’s governor, Khamis Abdullah Abakar. Beyond the death sentences, the judge ordered the confiscation of all RSF assets and instructed the authorities to seek Interpol red notices to secure the arrest and extradition of those convicted – measures aimed at reaching men the court cannot physically detain.
What Happened in Darfur
The atrocities behind the verdict were among the darkest chapters of the war. In 2023, RSF fighters and allied militias besieged el-Geneina, and rights groups documented ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, looting and the mass displacement of non-Arab communities, particularly the Masalit people. The governor, Abakar, was killed shortly after publicly accusing the RSF of genocide; video of his body being mutilated circulated online, though the RSF blamed the army and denied responsibility.
The scale was staggering. Rights monitors estimated that around 1,500 people were killed in el-Geneina in the first two months of the war alone, forcing tens of thousands of Masalit to flee on foot across the border into eastern Chad. Human Rights Watch concluded in 2024 that what happened in el-Geneina amounted to ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide – an independent assessment that lends weight to the court’s findings, whatever its political context.
El-Geneina became a symbol of the war’s ethnic dimension. The city sits near the Chad border in a region with a long history of conflict between Arab and non-Arab communities, and survivors and monitors described the 2023 assault as a deliberate campaign against the Masalit specifically – homes and neighbourhoods burned, men and boys singled out, and entire families forced to walk for days to reach safety. It is those events, more than any single incident, that underpin the genocide charge.
Justice on Paper, Not Yet in Practice
For all its gravity, the ruling’s immediate impact is uncertain. The RSF controls large parts of western Sudan, and the convicted remain well beyond the army-led government’s reach. A death sentence cannot be carried out on a defendant no one can find, and Interpol notices depend on other states choosing to act.
There is also the matter of who is judging whom. The court sits in Port Sudan, the wartime seat of the army-aligned government that is the RSF’s enemy on the battlefield. The RSF-linked Sudan Founding Alliance rejected the ruling outright, and the paramilitary group has consistently denied committing war crimes. That does not disprove the court’s findings, which align with independent investigations, but it does mean the verdict will be contested as partisan by one side even as it is welcomed as overdue justice by the other. The war has already deepened humanitarian crises across the region, compounding disasters like the Ebola outbreak unfolding in neighbouring central Africa.
How Sudan Got Here
To understand the verdict, it helps to trace Hemedti’s rise. The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias blamed for atrocities in the earlier Darfur conflict of the 2000s; in 2013 the government of Omar al-Bashir formalised many of those fighters into the new Rapid Support Forces and put Hemedti at their head. He became one of al-Bashir’s most powerful allies before helping to remove him during the 2019 uprising.
In the years that followed, Hemedti and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan became the two dominant figures in Sudan’s military-led order – and then rivals. In April 2023 their power struggle exploded into open war in Khartoum and spread nationwide. The army has since clawed back ground, recapturing the presidential palace and most of the capital by March 2025, but the RSF remains entrenched in the west, and the fighting grinds on across regions such as Kordofan.
The human cost has been catastrophic. The war has killed tens of thousands of people and driven more than 12 million from their homes, creating what aid agencies have repeatedly described as the world’s largest displacement crisis, with famine confirmed in parts of the country. It is against that backdrop of mass suffering that the Port Sudan verdict lands – a single legal reckoning set against a national catastrophe still unfolding.
The International Dimension
Sudan’s courts are not the only ones circling the RSF. The United States determined in January 2025 that the RSF and allied militias had committed genocide in Sudan, and it sanctioned Hemedti personally. The International Criminal Court, which has long held a mandate over Darfur, has said its investigators obtained evidence connecting atrocities in el-Geneina and el-Fasher to top RSF leaders, though after years of work it has yet to publicly name suspects or file charges – a delay that has drawn criticism.
Complicating matters, Hemedti has not been friendless abroad. Kenya’s president hosted him at the State House, allowed the RSF to convene a parallel-administration meeting in Nairobi and reportedly granted RSF leaders travel documents – moves that drew sharp objections and underscored how divided international responses to the war have been. Accountability, in other words, is being pursued in several venues at once, none of them yet able to put Hemedti in a cell.
What Comes Next
In the near term, the verdict changes little on the battlefield. The war continues, the RSF holds its territory, and Hemedti remains at large. Its real significance may be longer-term: a formal, documented conviction that adds to a growing international record and narrows the space in which he and his commanders can travel, hold assets or claim legitimacy.
History offers a sobering parallel. Al-Bashir himself was indicted by the ICC for Darfur back in 2009 and evaded arrest for years while in power. Whether this ruling ever translates into a defendant in the dock will depend less on the court that issued it than on how Sudan’s war ultimately ends – and on whether the world’s appetite for accountability outlasts the conflict itself. For the victims of el-Geneina, a verdict on paper is not justice served, but it is, at least, justice named.
