About 270 Sudanese workers, lured by the pledge of employment in the United Arab Emirates (United Arab Emirates), were taken to war-torn Libya to fight with Putist general Khalifa Haftar instead, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Sunday.
While expected to work as security guards in the air-conditioned skyscrapers or cavernous malls in Abu Dhabi, the Sudanese men were employed by Black Shield Security Services, an Emirati security services company, and a short time later their passports and telephones were confiscated.
“I only saw my passport again the day they sent me back to Sudan (more than five months later),” said one of the Sudanese men.
According to the human rights group, the Sudanese workers underwent months of military training and were not told where they would be stationed.
Amer, one of the Sudanese workers, told HRW that beginning in mid-November, UAE officials taught the men military skills, combat drills, army crawling and other methods that have nothing to do with being a security guard.
“We trained in using all types of weapons, Kalashnikovs, machine guns, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and mortars. We learned how to disassemble and assemble the weapon, how to use hand grenades and how to shoot at targets, the man said.
“Amer had no idea where he was – only that he was many miles away from where he had planned to be. It was not until he and his Sudanese employees noticed the labels on the water bottles,” he said, that they realized they had been inadvertently taken. to war-torn Libya, “the rights group wrote.
Twenty-nine-year-old Amer arrived in the United Arab Emirates in September 2019 after paying 12,000 Sudanese pounds ($ 266 at the time) in recruitment fees and was in Libya months later.
Libya is divided between the UN’s recognized National Accord Government (GNA) based in the capital Tripoli and the forces of the East-based warlord Haftar. Haftar is supported by the United Arab Emirates, Russia, France and Egypt, while GNA is supported by Turkey and the rich Gulf state of Qatar.
HRW stated that the Sudanese workers were transferred to a military association in the eastern Libyan city of Ras Lanuf, located in the oil moon along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Sirte, where four of the country’s oil terminals are located.
The rights group pointed out that the Sudanese workers lived with Haftar’s militia and were urged to guard the surrounding oil facilities.
Since September, Haftar’s forces have retained control of the region and the oil terminals they seized in January 2020, the group says.
“The air base was filled with military aircraft and weapons,” Amer said. “It was small and almost everyone there was Emirati.”
Amer also told HRW about the abuse and mistreatment of Sudanese workers by Haftar’s forces. “The Libyan fighters treated us terribly. They would shoot us with their weapons and try to provoke us and terrorize us, says Amer. “We could not get in touch with anyone, and we were afraid that if we did anything wrong, they would kill us or injure us. So we remained silent and did not try to put ourselves in danger, he added.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry in January had said it was investigating the case after some of the men’s families gathered outside the ministry’s building in the capital Khartoum to protest.
The United Arab Emirates is Haftar’s most important supporter of a conflict that has increasingly become a proxy war. The United Arab Emirates has also been a prominent player in Sudan, where it has close ties to military officials, who overthrew former ruler Omar al-Bashir last year after months of street protests. Sudan sent troops to fight in the Saudi coalition in Yemen, in which the United Arab Emirates also participated, although the Sudanese transitional government, which shares power with the military, has said it is reducing its presence there.
Foreign fighters and guards, including many from Sudan, have been used in Libya and Yemen many times. A UN report on Sudan released in January also said that many Arabs from the war-weary region of Darfur were fighting as “individual mercenaries” along with warring Libyan parties.
Since returning to Sudan, the men have been preparing to sue. The head of a local team of volunteer lawyers told the rights group in September 2020 that criminal complaints about fraud and human trafficking have been filed in the courts “against local recruitment companies that helped deceive Sudanese men and facilitate jobs with Black Shield Security Services.”
Another lawyer said he planned to take the case to an international court.
Violation of humanitarian law
HRW stressed that the fraud of Sudanese workers risks becoming potential military targets in a country that has been involved in an ongoing civil war for several years and may be a violation of international humanitarian law.
The rights group added that this was just an example of “the United Arab Emirates’ harmful interference in foreign conflicts” and that other activities included “bringing large sums of money and weapons to abusive local armed groups in Yemen and Libya and hiring foreign fighters to help carry out their proxies. war in the region. ”
It stated that the UAE also pumped billions of dollars into Sudan even before Bashir was fired in 2019 in exchange for the struggling country’s participation in the United Arab Emirates and the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen. ”
HRW reiterated that the United Arab Emirates is one of the countries that has “routinely and systematically” violated the UN arms embargo in 2011, according to reports by UN experts.
In April, a confidential UN report revealed that two Dubai-based companies have sent Western mercenaries to support Haftar in his offensive.
The rights group stated that the United Arab Emirates supplies weapons and ammunition to Haftar’s forces, operates a base in eastern Libya and uses armed drones to assist Haftar.
“Since April 2019, it has carried out more than 850 drone and jet strikes on behalf of the general and killed many people,” it added.
