If we moved too slowly, they beat us with whips," he told AFP from Tawila -- an overwhelmed refugee town west of El-Fasher now sheltering hundreds of thousands of people. But in Tawila, an AFP journalist gathered rare testimonies from five former detainees, speaking to them inside fragile shelters of straw and tattered fabric. Ahmed Aman, 45, another hospital detainee, said some detainees "had their fingernails ripped out with pliers". After weeks at the hospital, he was moved to Garni, northwest of El-Fasher, where CIR-verified footage showed "at least 600 detainees" being forcibly marched, including women and children. He reached safety only in February after four months in Shala prison, where the UN said the RSF held more than 2,000 detainees by January.

Source: Standard Digital March 22, 2026 15:09 UTC