Evidence of beatings, torture and starvation at RSF base

Lying between the makeshift graves is a mattress, a large bloodstain visible in the midday sun. A name is scrawled in Arabic on its ragged fabric: Mohammed Adam.

- By Mark Townsend

Who was Adam? How had he ended up here, in a bleak corner of a remote military installation in Sudan’s Khartoum state? Had his body been stretchered on the mattress from the detention centre nearby and dumped into one of hundreds of unmarked graves?

Almost two years into Sudan’s catastrophic civil war, Adam’s likely demise reflects the unanswered questions being asked across the country. The conflict is characterised by unrecorded killings, enforced disappearances, by families searching vainly for lost loved ones. No one knows exactly how many have died. Similarly it is a conflict contaminated by myriad war crimes. Few episodes may prove to be more egregious than what evolved within the amber-bricked building several hundred metres from where Adam’s mattress was found.

The building housed an apparent torture centre under the command of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). As calls start for an investigation into the magnitude of what unfolded inside, attempts to identify the bodies within hundreds of unmarked graves nearby will hopefully begin.