The Hidden Facts of Emptying the Prisons: How the Janjaweed Released the Most Dangerous Terrorist Elements (1-2)

The night of 21 April 2023 was one of the most challenging nights for the prison officers in Khartoum and the coldest for the heart of Zainab, that beautiful girl on trial in the women’s prison. She hoped, after falling captive to ISIS ideology, that the Rapid Support (RSF) militia would save her from the brutality of the penitentiary prison and others. They suddenly found themselves in the old capital, facing their mysterious fate, as well as hardened criminals and extremist elements. There is no harm in naming them and investigating the impact of their great escape, step by step, to the point of their involvement in the fighting alongside the Janjaweed brigades, the extent of the seriousness of the matter, and the deliberate violation of prison laws. We will discuss this later with pictures and names in Almohagig, without explicitly neglecting to answer the critical question: How did it happen?

Screams of Fear and Bullets

Amid the fighting that was taking place in the centre of Khartoum, on Friday and Saturday in particular, before going to the first truce sponsored by mediation, the RSF was able to make further incursions. For a while, the water was cut off, followed by cries of fear and the sound of bullets. Then, little by little, electricity was cut off. The high walls of the prisons plunged into darkness, while the RSF militia had just engaged, or before that, with non-spontaneous measures, in a frantic campaign of revenge, affecting all of Khartoum’s prisons, starting with Al-Huda and Soba prison. It did not end with Kober. The RSF took 25 thousand prisoners outside the cells without any preparations. It seems that this was done either for revenge or to compensate for the failure of Hemedti’s military adventure. As chaos prevailed, people were forcibly displaced from their homes. As the Janjaweed leader had vowed, people’s homes were now inhabited by cats and prisoners as well.

The General Intelligence Service spent more than three years carrying out more than (17) interceptive security operations against terrorist organisations, targeting, very precisely, the sleeper cell nests in cities and deserts of dangerous organisations, including ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Hamas Movement. This campaign resulted in the arrest of more than a hundred terrorists and extremists. Still, the militia decided to make the situation worse by releasing the prisoners as part of the scenario of chaos, thus undermining the safety of ordinary citizens.

This is a deliberate act of spreading crime, and there is no escape from submitting to its cunning reality.

The Militia is Searching for its Extremist Elements

It is important to note that the Sudanese authorities handed over some foreigners – wanted in terrorist cases – to their countries. At the same time, the rest were kept pending trial, as their cases were serious. Many of them belong to ISIS, with insane convictions that could bring untold harm, including young girls and others who work in the drug and weapons trade. A few are moving in the paths of human trafficking, and it is not a coincidence that these people have a relationship with activities that the militia itself was responsible for, away from the limelight. The matter is no longer a secret today, in addition to the release of Ali Rizkallah Al-Safna, who is accused of premeditated murder, and Muhammed and Abu Al-Dukair.

The Dagalo family also brought hundreds of mercenaries from African regions where Boko Haram and ISIS groups are active. They were characterised by violent nature in the fighting, and their extremist tendencies were exposed as they did not care about the rules of engagement or the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians!

The statistics of terrorist elements who were deported to their countries reached (47), all of them males, while the number of those detained awaiting trial reached (26) terrorists. Whether those elements have been deported or are still on the waiting list, they are generally trained to fight. They are extremely dangerous, and they will not hesitate at all from engaging in any illegal activities, as this is their habit, as most of them belong to the Jabra Prison, many of whose inmates specialise in manufacturing explosives. Therefore, they were explicitly detained in the detention centres of the intelligence service, and they have not been released.

When the militia opened all the prisons in Khartoum State, the agency’s duty required it to play its role in protecting society, eliminating danger, and reducing organised or cross-border crime, whatever the cost.

The Great Escape

There is no reason to doubt the RSF rebel forces’ intention to reach the walls of those prisons and destroy the buildings, with the intention of enabling the prisoners to join the RSF ranks. The scene seemed similar to the tale of “Shawshank” or rather the story of “The Escape from Alcatraz,” which is what I realised.

Amjad Faisal, one of the leaders who joined ISIS in Syria, found someone to help him escape. Although he was not old enough to escape, he was digging with his nails as part of the group of four that slept and woke up under the weight of continuous bombing for several months, until mid-January 2024, when they infiltrated through holes in the roof. On that particular day, the intelligence building was exposed to heavy shelling, which was, in fact, a cover for attacks with known purposes. The intense fighting led to severe damage to the structure of the building and also destroyed the wall. The projectiles fell inside the cells of the detainees themselves, causing direct injuries to them.

The guard personnel were valiant in repelling that attack, as their duty was to prevent the prisoners from escaping. Still, the attack was violent and continuous, and the weapons were unequal, resulting in the martyrdom of many officers and soldiers entrusted with securing the detainees. The matter began with the militia members creeping towards the surrounding area’s buildings. Then, after that, they imposed a tight siege on them and prevented the arrival of any reinforcements that would help in the cohesion of the force that carried out the tasks of protection and security.

The RSF command used the first fleeing extremist vanguard to liberate the rest and created a terrorist battalion harbouring evils that disturb the rest. So what? What happened next?

To be Continued…