Reported by Al Jazeera
Investigative unit CIR identifies 25 commanders present at five sites during periods of reported sexual violence.
On the day the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) entered el-Fasher in October 2025, a video posted on TikTok showed one of the paramilitary group’s commanders addressing fighters. She appeared to be encouraging fighters to rape women in Sudan’s Northern State, hundreds of kilometres from el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur.
“The Northern State? You’ll just go for its women, so you cleanse their lineage and bring [brave] sons just like you.”
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The speaker was Khademallah Khashmin Herika, also known as Shiraz Khalid, a major commanding the RSF’s female contingent, according to the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR).
The British open-source investigative organisation describes her words as an explicit incitement to rape. It could not establish exactly where the video, posted on October 26, 2025, was filmed. Separate footage placed Herika in el-Fasher and in Garni, where survivors described girls being detained and raped.
Herika is among 25 commanders identified in a CIR investigation into sexual violence in Sudan’s war. Published on Monday, a year after her video was posted, it examines five locations and periods of reported abuse, linking commanders’ appearances and roles to evidence gathered by the United Nations, rights groups and Sudanese organisations.
The findings cover both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which have been fighting a three-year-long war, as well as their allied forces. They identify commanders who exercised authority where atrocities were reported, but do not establish that each personally committed or ordered acts of rape.
Investigators checked identities, locations and, where possible, filming dates, with commander sightings independently verified by two analysts. They compared that record with survivor accounts, reported incidents, threatening rhetoric, and indicators of heightened risk, including forced separation of men and women.
The UN fact-finding mission documented mass and gang rape during the RSF takeover of el-Fasher, including at the Saudi Hospital and el-Fasher University. Women and girls were also attacked along escape routes out of the city.
CIR’s report cites a survivor who described being held with other girls at soldiers’ quarters near…