The daughter of a Sudanese community leader who was abused by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in disturbing viral footage has spoken out after discovering he died while in RSF captivity, writes Qadeer Popal.
When Rania ElTayeb opened her Facebook app in October 2024, she was shocked to see footage of her father, Eltayeb Eltaher Ibrahim, being abused by the RSF militia, in his home village of Al Sireha in Gezira State, Sudan.
While her father had spent several months assuring her things were fine, despite the advance of the RSF — which is implicated in widespread crimes against humanity, and sexual violence — on El-Fasher city in Darfur, the footage showed a stark contrast.
The man in the footage appeared slim, frail and weak. Almost totally unrecognisable to her.
“I hadn’t seen him in a really long time, and I think he was purposely not sending us pictures or going on video calls with us, so we don’t see that he was affected by the shortage of food and water,” Eltayeb said.
Worse still, the footage showed her frail father being grabbed by his beard and violently shaken by a prominent member of the RSF, Omar Sharon, who smiled while carrying out the vicious assault.
A traumatised Eltayeb couldn’t make sense of it. Her father was a respected businessman, community leader and philanthropist.
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“He was a community man, so he would lead people in prayers. Him and other people put their money together, got solar panels for the whole town.”
The footage infuriated her, and she wasn’t alone. By the end of the week, it had been shared by prominent advocacy pages like Documenting Oppression Against Muslims (DOAM), drawing outrage from social media users from across the world.
In fact, Sharon, the abuser, recorded a video with Ibrahim to allay public anger and concerns about Ibrahim’s safety, while other RSF propaganda accounts tried to justify the abuse.
“It went viral so quickly that it sent the RSF into a panic because of the backlash. They were on TikTok saying that: ‘He’s a part of the army, he’s an Islamist, he’s a terrorist.’ They called him all types of names and they even argued with us like, show us proof that your dad is not a terrorist. How can I do that?”
The RSF went as far as claiming Ibrahim was a well-known anti-RSF fighter, prompting the fighter to release footage, identifying himself.
Despite growing anger, the RSF refused to release Ibrahim, holding him for weeks at a time at a make-shift detention centre where abuses and deprivation of rights were widespread.
“They were scared of people being empowered by the situation, because everyone was so angry,” Eltayeb said.
Disappearance and death
During this time, neither Eltayeb or her siblings were able to reach their father, with the small amounts of information they received coming from released captives and ransomists.
“He told us that you can pay a certain amount and we’ll release your father. And it was a big amount. I’m not, if I’m not mistaken, it was a 100K plus,” Eltayeb said, adding that no one in the family was able to speak to Ibrahim during this period, even after paying the ransom deposit.
Months passed with no information or contact with Ibrahim. It wasn’t until May 2025, more than six months after Ibrahim was abducted, that they learned of his terrible fate.
When word spread that a batch of abductees was being released by the RSF, Eltayeb’s family began searching hospitals, hoping to surprise Ibrahim by meeting him there.
However, he was nowhere to be found. Instead, they encountered someone who already knew who they were who claimed to have been kidnapped alongside Ibrahim.
”They found this man and he told them that my dad left a will with him. He told him all about us, our names. He even made him memorise our phone numbers.”
He then shared with them the devastating news: Ibrahim died on Friday, April 4th, 2025 while being transported between abduction sites by the RSF.
His now freed fellow hostage, whose name has been redacted for safety reasons, had been entrusted with conveying Ibrahim’s final wishes to his family.
“He told him about the lands that we own, the important documents, what to do, what not to do. To think that he was starving and still thinking about his kin. That’s not someone you call a terrorist.”
Since learning of her father’s death, Eltayeb has been using her father’s story to raise awareness of the violence the people of Sudan are subjected to, at the hands of the RSF.
”Yes, my dad’s video was horrible, but this is just a drop of everything that’s happening,” she stated, adding that even though the RSF has not held anyone to account for her father’s abuse, abduction and death, the public can play a role in holding them accountable. The least we can do is boycott the people funding them.”
Who are the RSF?
The Rapid Support Forces are a Sudanese paramilitary force turned rogue militia which formerly operated by the Sudanese government.
Under the command of Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, they have been fighting a civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since 2023 for control of the country, after having taken power along with the SAF in a military coup in 2021.
Their forces have been documented committing atrocious war crimes on a vast scale against members of rival ethnic groups or African tribal clans. The group has been receiving
The death toll for the Sudanese Civil War is highly uncertain but may exceed 150,000, with 8.8 million people internally displaced and another 3.5 million as refugees.
Famine, death and disease now plague Sudan and the war appears to be escalating with more intense firepower and weaponry being spotted on the battlefields, suggesting outside supporters of the rival sides are sending in more weaponry to the warring sides.
Following a lengthy siege on the Darfur regions city capital El-Fasher, footage of torture, killings and a massacre against civilians has been shared on social media.
An estimated 2,500 or more civilians have been executed or murdered since the city fell to the RSF, with women, children and the elderly clearly seen being oppressed or killed on camera.
