US sanctions 3 people, 2 firms over allegedly recruiting Colombian mercenaries in Sudan war

CAIRO (AP) — The U.S. imposed sanctions on three people and two firms over allegedly recruiting and deploying Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s war, which has entered its fourth year with no end in sight.

The sanctions, announced by the Department of Treasury late Friday, were the latest by the United States on the RSF, which have been at war against the Sudanese military since April 2023.

The group has been accused by rights groups of atrocities amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war which created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The RSF was born out of feared Arab Janjaweed militias, notorious for atrocities in the early 2000s against people identifying as East or Central African in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the sanctioned individuals and firms were involved in “recruiting and deploying former Colombian military personnel to Sudan to fight on behalf of the RSF.”

They include a Bogota, Colombia-based employment agency, Fénix, which was established last year as a replacement of another firm, A4SI, that the U.S. sanctioned in December also for aiding the RSF.

Both firms were founded by Alvaro Andres Quijano Becerra, a retired Colombian military officer, and his wife. They are also on a Sudan-related sanctions list, according to the Treasury’s statement.

Included in the latest sanctions were another Bogota-based recruitment agency, GQAB, and three individuals: Fénix’s manager Quijano Torres, GQAB owner Jose Garcia Batte, and GQAB’s manager and legal representative Omar Garcia Batte. All are Colombian nationals, the Treasury said.

It said that hundreds of former Colombian soldiers have been deployed to Sudan since 2024 to assist the paramilitaries in the war, “serving in combat and technical roles and participating in battles across the country.”

The U.S. has accused the RSF of repeatedly carrying out “summary executions, ethnically motivated attacks, sexual and gender-based violence, and torture throughout areas under its control,” most recently in the Darfur city of el-Fasher.

The State Department said in December that members of RSF had committed “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.”

The Treasury cited the RSF attack on the Darfur city of el-Fasher in October, which United Nations-commissioned experts said bore “ the hallmarks of genocide. ” At least 6,000 people were killed in just three days in that attack, according to the U.N.

The war started when tensions between the military and RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum on April 15, 2023, before spreading across the northeastern African nation.

The war killed at least 59,000 people over the course of three years, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, known as ACLED. The U.S.-based war tracking group, however, said its toll was almost certainly an underestimate given difficulties in reporting.

The conflict has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with about 34 million people — almost two out of every three Sudanese — needing assistance, according to the U.N.