INVESTIGATION: Claims that Sudan’s army executed 70 in Al-Halfaya, Khartoum North (Bahri)
Days after Sudan’s army launched an offensive in capital city Khartoum which liberated various neighbourhoods from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, a UN expert called for the urgent protection of civilians in Khartoum amid alarming reports of summary executions. Citing videos circulating social media, the designated Sudan expert of the UN’s human rights body alleged that the army and the Baraa bin-Malik brigade executed 70 young men in the neighbourhood of Al-Halfaya in Khartoum Bahri. Nonetheless, there are suspicions that the UN has again fallen prey to disinformation about the war in Sudan.
Therefore, this investigation explores:
1. The dubious nature of the original source and their history of disinformation.
2. The lack of confirmation that the incident occurred from credible local sources
3. Doubts over the video “evidence”.
1. INITIAL REPORTS
On 30 September, social media accounts affiliated to the Taqadum coalition – which is accused of siding with the RSF - circulated reports that the Baraa bin Malik brigade and the Sudanese army jointly executed 33 young men volunteering at communal kitchens in Al-Halfaya.
One of the first accounts to post about this incident was Ameen Nasir Mekki, a Taqadum leader who has faced repeated accusations of publishing misleading news that has then been reported by credible media outlets.
Amin Mekki’s history of disinformation
In July 2023, Mekki was accused of hijacking the Ministry of Health’s Khartoum state official Facebook page, and posting on it from France.
@LienaAbdu tweeted: “the Ministry of Health page was stolen by [RSF supporter] Ameen Mekki, who cannot even say that [lab specialist Musab Abdullah Ibrahim was] killed by the RSF!”
The tweet was accompanied by two screenshots. The first one was from a comment made by Ministry of Health employee Talal Omer, who said: “[I requested that Ameen] return the page of the Khartoum Ministry of Health. [Ameen] stole it and took to France to use it as a political tool. Us in the ministry are harmed by this as we are unable to [use the page] to guide people to hospitals. The page is verified by Facebook but this despicable person controls it and blocked me when I confronted him about it”.
In the second screenshot shows the Khartoum Ministry of Health page announcing the death of lab specialist Musab Abdullah Ibrahim.
A statement subsequently released by the Sudanese Pharmacist Professionals Association accused the Khartoum health ministry page of obscuring that the lab specialist was killed by the RSF in an attempt to “mislead public opinion”.
A condemnation followed from the UN Secretary General.
However, Reuters withdrew their story, citing doubts about the truthfulness of the website that posted the information.
Under Mekki’s administration, the page was accused of following an anti-army and pro-RSF agenda, leading to a social media hashtag campaign that translates to “Return the page Ameen Makki”.
At the start of 2024, Mekki wrote a Twitter post claiming that the Sudanese army executed a doctor Abdelmonem Abdelhafeez, citing a statement from the doctor’s family.
The doctor’s own daughter had to refute this by saying her late father was killed by a stray bullet in RSF-held territory.
In June, Mekki would go on to regurgitate RSF narratives following the militia’s massacre in Wad al-Noura village. In response to a question about the RSF attacking innocent people, Mekki said the village hosts volunteer fighters.
The report spreads from social to traditional media
Another person to circulate reports of the army executing communal kitchen volunteers was a pro-Taqadum activist named Ammar Al-Sadig. A resident of al-Halfaya, who has not left the neighbourhood since the war began, denied the reports and said the army has been delivering aid to Al-Halfaya. He was subsequently blocked by Al-Sadig.
Then, a post from an influencer called Mohamed Khalifa claimed that at least 120 were killed in the Halfaya communal kitchen executions. Khalifa said that the army arrived with a list of names and summarily executed those accused of collaborating with the RSF.
On the first of October, Taqadum then released a press statement on the alleged extrajudicial killing of civilians in Al-Halfaya. The statement was carried in Beam Reports, an outlet aiming to combat misinformation and disinformation in Sudan. Al-Taghyeer, a Taqadum linked outlet, reported that “dozens of civilians liquidated by Sudanese Army and Islamist brigades”. The “Sudanese army accused of executing civilians in Khartoum Bahri,” reported Sudan Tribune. “Various sectors of Sudanese society condemned the killing of a group of young men in Halfaya” reported Radio Dabanga.
In their report, Dabanga cited a social media post written by “Ma Reena” that quoted unnamed residents of Al-Halfaya.
2. LACK OF CONFIRMATION
Yet, in the comments of the said Facebook post, Abdulmoneim Abdulmajid, a man from Al-Halfaya, repeatedly asked for just ten names of those executed by the army. The original poster said they can only send videos.
Up until now, this not occurred for the reported executions in Al-Halfaya, nor have victim’s families come forward. The absence of such confirmation has been questioned by Sudanese social media users.
Denials from credible local sources
Bahri Emergency Rooms, who are responsible for the kitchens, have not made a statement on the so-called executions. Their first Facebook post after the alleged incident, which came five days after the reports, was a generic appeal for support.
Nonetheless, only nine hours after Amin Mekki’s initial Facebook post, Bahri Emergency Room volunteer Eiman Hamad Elnil, said the news about the army liquidating the Bahri communal kitchen volunteers is completely untrue, and aims to create panic among them.
Photos from her Facebook account further cement proof of her closeness to the Bahri communal kitchens, as indicated by posts announcing food deliveries to the neighbourhoods of Al-Droshab and Al-Danagla, which are situated to the north and south of Al-Halfaya respectively.
Three days later, Eiman also denied a statement circulating social media that was written in her name confirming the incident.
By this stage, however, the UN had already published a statement citing the incident to call for civilian protection in Khartoum.
At 6.37pm on the 30th of September, around eight hours after Amin Mekki’s initial post, Mosab Aljak, who is close to the Bahri communal kitchens, also denied reports of the executions.
Aljak is treated as a credible source considering that his Facebook also documents the work of the local communal kitchens in Bahri. The two screenshots below announce the arrival of food donations to the neighbourhood of Shambat (17 August and 14 September), which is roughly a ten minute drive from Al-Halfaya.
Furthermore, on the 5th of October, the resistance committee of Al-Halfaya, where the executions are said to have happened, published a statement saying that the reports are incorrect.
But what about the circulating videos mentioned in the UN report?
3. THE VIDEOS
Radio Dabanga pointed to a two-minute video clip showing armed men in a house in Bahri standing near young men’s bodies wearing civilian clothes after they had killed them.
Yet screengrabs from the videos show one of the men wearing the RSF kabdi – the militia’s distinctive light beige camo.
Another young man has the distinctive RSF kadmol scarf wrapped around his neck.
The journalist Muzzamil Abu Al-Gasim then shared a voice recording from a man named Ahmed Mostafa, who said the house in the video belongs to his family, and that it was occupied by the RSF militants after its inhabitants were evicted. He said the following:
People are pointing at the army over the video where they said there were executions at communal kitchens in Al-Halfaya. Of course, this house was ours. All of these houses are ours…
These are all our family. Our cousins and so on. We know these houses. We were born and raised in them. We know this area alley by alley.
The information that was published is very false. We have all the evidence. With photos of the house, with the [armoured] vehicles and canon with which [the RSF] broke and entered.
[RSF] broke a wall between the houses.
Our uncle Mustafa is an expatriate in Saudi Arabia. He’s a teacher. He’s an elderly man, almost 80 years old. An expatriate since the late 70s. Our uncle Taj Al-Deen is also in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh. He’s also an expatriate for over 40 years. All of these people left very early.
Then the dirt [RSF] came, they entered the home, kicked out its people. We have been following this story from the start. From when they kicked out our sons, the sons of my uncles Mustafa and Taj Al-Deen. They were kicked out of the house. [RSF] occupied the houses.
[RSF] turned uncle Mustafa’s house into a kitchen, and uncle Taj Al-Deen’s house became a base for an RSF commander.
In the comments, his daughter Aram said the house was not a communal kitchen, with the RSF said to have broken a wall in the home in order to bring in an armoured vehicle.
Nonetheless, Radio Dabanga linked to another circulating video – this one purporting the show the executions as they occurred. The video was uploaded by a known RSF propaganda account claiming to be a woman called Sammar Othman, who also tagged other RSF propaganda accounts in the post.
Marc Owen-Jones, an expert on social media disinformation, noted how UAE-sponsored disinformation networks targeting Sudan tend to use pictures of attractive women to drive engagement. This is prevalent among RSF propaganda accounts including "Sammar Othman’s”.
A reverse search for Sammar Othman’s profile picture show that it first appeared on Tumblr in 2016 as part of photographer Ahmed Abushakeema’s 1,000 Faces of Sudan project.
Another RSF propaganda account - @WidadAlMahdi - uses the same tactic. The profile picture was taken from Pinterest, with the face belonging to a UK-based influencer of South Asian origin named Thaslima Akkas.
The video was also posted by the largest RSF propaganda account, Wad al-Behair,
But a reverse search of the video showed how it began circulating social media on the 24th of June 2024, where users uploading it described RSF militants executing civilians.
And yet, despite the denials of local activists on the ground and the dubious nature of the video evidence used, the designated Sudan expert of the UN’s human rights body used reports of unspecified persons as a basis to call for civilian protection in Khartoum.
