The families forced to pay ransoms to free loved ones in Sudan’s el-Fasher

When Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the besieged city of el-Fasher on October 26, Mabrooka’s husband and brother ran for their lives.

The plan was for them to head to Tawila – about 60 kilometres (37 miles) away – where Mabrooka would be waiting for them with her three small children. By sundown, they had still not arrived.

News spread that the RSF, which has been fighting a bitter war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, was carrying out summary executions against the population of el-Fasher, which it accused of siding with its enemy. Mabrooka began fearing the worst.

Then, her phone rang.

A voice told Mabrooka to wire 14,000 Sudanese pounds ($23) – a hefty sum for displaced and destitute Sudanese families – to a bank account, which she suspected belonged to an RSF fighter.

“When I got the call, I was terrified and crying the whole time,” Mabrooka, 27, told media. “I knew they would for sure torture and kill them if I didn’t muster up the money.”

Kidnapping and ransom

Since the RSF captured the army’s last stronghold in the sprawling western region of Darfur, the group has carried out a series of atrocities, including execution, rape and mass looting, according to survivors and local monitors. The Sudan Doctors Network put the death toll from the RSF attack at 1,500 in the first few days after the city’s fall, but the true number could be far higher.

While acknowledging that some crimes have been committed by its forces, the RSF has largely denied some of the worst accusations against it, and insists that it is “liberating” territory.

But in el-Fasher, most of the victims have been from the mainly sedentary “non-Arab” population, who have lived in fear of the nomadic “Arab” fighters who comprise most of the RSF.

The targeted ethnic violence has forced tens of thousands of people to flee to neighbouring villages, but many people have been abducted for ransom by RSF fighters along the way.

According to local monitors, international non-government organisations, and victims’ families, it’s likely that thousands of people have desperately wired money straight to RSF fighters to national banks via banking applications.

Monitors told media that ransoms range from anywhere between $20 to $20,000.

“There is a large number among the displaced people who have been detained, and the RSF is asking for a really big amount from their families,” said Mohamed*, a local relief worker in Tawila with the Emergency Response Room (ERR), a grassroots initiative spearheading the aid response across Sudan.

Mathilde Vu, the Sudan advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told media that many civilians are reportedly being detained as they flee and asked to pay a “transportation fee” to reach Tawila.

Many children have been separated from their parents, as well as women and children from their husbands, she said.

In addition, the United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been uprooted from el-Fasher since October 26 and that over 40,000 of them headed towards Tawila.

Of this number, Vu noted that only about 6,000 people have arrived in Tawila so far.

“This is a clear indicator that people are disappearing or are being held back,” she told media.

Ransom videos

Some families who lost touch with loved ones in el-Fasher received ransom videos from unidentified kidnappers.

Local monitors and global relief agencies, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their teams on the ground, said that RSF fighters appear to be the kidnappers in most cases.

However, criminal gangs and other “Arab” militias aligned with the RSF may also be implicated.

One video circulating over social media, which has been authenticated by media’s verification team, Sanad, showed a man being held for ransom.

In the video, Abbas al-Sadiq, who is a psychology professor at el-Fasher University, pleaded for one of his colleagues to pay a ransom that amounts to roughly $3,330.

“Please wire the money to the [account] number I sent you and please do it now because we don’t have a lot of time. They are just giving me 10 minutes,” said al-Sadiq in the video.

Noon Baramaki, a journalist from el-Fasher, told media that al-Sadiq was released on Saturday after his ransom was paid. A colleague of al-Sadiq also reported on social media that al-Sadiq has been released, but media has been unable to reach him.

Baramki stressed that countless other people have been abducted, yet their families are scared to speak to the press out of fear that the RSF will somehow find out and then kill their loved ones.

“People are really scared to make any statements because they don’t want to be the reason that anyone they love gets hurt or killed,” Baramki told media.

Reunited

A number of news reports have documented that the RSF and allied gangs are executing people who can’t pay the ransoms that have been demanded.

For most families in el-Fasher – who for 18 months were living under a brutal RSF siege that led to a famine – paying a ransom that is thousands or even hundreds of dollars is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Mabrooka, whose husband and brother were abducted, considers herself lucky. She said that she relied on donations from friends and family members in Tawila in order to promptly gather 12,000 Sudanese pounds ($20), which the kidnappers accepted.

Once the money was wired, her brother and husband were released on November 1. They managed to make it to Tawila despite limping and staggering from the exhaustion and beatings they endured in captivity, as well as from the lack of food and water they were given.

“When they finally arrived in Tawila, I cried and cried and cried tears of joy. I remember hugging them and greeting them,” Mabrooka told media. “Thank God they made it.”

While she is now reunited with her husband and brother, she said they are still living in fear.

The family believes that the RSF could soon attack Tawila next to continue to persecute non-Arabs and finish off what many relief agencies, monitors and experts are describing as a possible genocide.

“Honestly, we are terrified that after the RSF finishes off el-Fasher, they’ll come after us here,” Mabrooka said.

“We are scared,” she told media. “Thank God [my husband and brother] returned, but people here are still scared.”