The fall of the city was accompanied by mass atrocities assessed as war crimes and crimes against humanity by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and described by UN investigators as bearing the “hallmarks of genocide”.<\/p>\n
“CIG assesses that the UAE-Colombian mercenary network bears shared responsibility for these outcomes,” says the report.<\/p>\n
“The scale of atrocities and siege in el-Fasher wouldn’t have happened without the drone operations the mercenaries provided,” Lynch adds, noting evidence that they also helped support the RSF siege.<\/p>\n
According to the report, the mercenaries operated as part of the Desert Wolves brigade, serving as drone pilots, artillerymen and instructors.<\/p>\n
One of them connected to wi-fi networks named “DRONES” and “LOBOS DEL DISIERTO [sic]” (meaning “Desert Wolves” in Spanish), while using Spanish-language settings.<\/p>\n
The brigade is led by retired Colombian army Colonel Alvaro Quijano, according to the Colombian digital news site La Silla Vac\u00eda. He is based in the UAE and has been sanctioned by the US, external<\/a> and UK governments, external<\/a> for recruiting Colombians to fight in Sudan.<\/p>\n The Desert Wolves were paid and employed by a UAE-based company with documented ties to senior Emirati government officials, according to La Silla Vac\u00eda and documents obtained by the CIG, the report says.<\/p>\n The CIG also says it identified devices with Spanish-language settings at a port in Somalia with links to the UAE, and at a town in south-eastern Libya believed to be a logistical hub for the flow of weapons to the RSF, allegedly facilitated by the Emirates.<\/p>\n The number of Colombian fighters in Sudan has previously been estimated in the low hundreds.<\/p>\n The US has twice sanctioned Colombian nationals and associated companies for recruiting mercenaries to fight in Sudan, in December and again last week.<\/p>\n The US Treasury Department has said that Colombian fighters supported the RSF capture of el-Fasher but has stopped short of making a direct connection to the UAE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fall of the city was accompanied by mass atrocities assessed as war crimes and crimes against humanity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-544164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}