Confidential report seen by MEE details UAE’s involvement in the Sudan war, as Lana Nusseibeh, its candidate for the UN, faces further scrutiny.
A confidential report by United Nations investigators “establishes conclusively” that the United Arab Emirates hired Colombian mercenaries to fight for Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The report, submitted to the UN Security Council last week and obtained by Middle East Eye, details how Global Security Services Group (GSSG), a UAE-based company with close ties to the government, moved the Colombians into Sudan through Libya, Somalia and Chad, where Emirati proxies control large swathes of territory.
The UN investigators also demonstrate that “the UAE-linked Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) base in Bosaso, Somalia, has been used as a site of transit and/or training for Colombian mercenaries prior to their deployment to Sudan”.
MEE and other outlets have previously reported on the use of Colombian mercenaries and the ports of Bosaso and Berbera by the UAE and RSF, which has been found by the UN and the United States to have committed genocide in Darfur, western Sudan.
Arms and other supplies have been flown in and transported overland to the RSF through territory controlled by the Haftar family and its militias in Libya, through Ethiopia, Chad and two breakaway regions in Somalia with close ties to the UAE: Puntland and Somaliland, which is recognised by Israel.
The UAE and the other entities involved in this network have denied any wrongdoing. The Emirati foreign ministry did not respond to MEE’s request for comment for this article.
But this fourth quarterly update of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, which is marked strictly confidential and will not be made public, will be harder for Abu Dhabi to shake off. In a letter included in the leaked report, the UAE said it “rejects any allegations of wrongdoing in relation to the Sudan conflict”, and that it “takes allegations about mercenaries very seriously”.
Those Columbian mercenaries also, according to the report, “played a significant role in RSF military operations in Darfur, particularly in the siege and capture of el-Fasher”.
“The mercenaries provided combat and technical support, including drone operation, artillery and infantry support,” the report says. “They were trained and deployed through a network of facilities and transit routes involving the UAE, Somalia, eastern Libya and Chad.”
Source: Middle East
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