A governor in a besieged city
Khamis Abdallah Abbakar was governor of West Darfur and head of the Sudanese Alliance, an armed coalition with strong support among the Massalit community. He had signed the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement and entered state government in 2021. When fighting between Sudan's armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces spread to El Geneina in April 2023, his office stood at the center of a city divided by siege, shelling and ethnically targeted attacks.
Abbakar was not a neutral observer to the conflict: he was both a civilian governor and the leader of an armed movement. Human Rights Watch described him as the de facto civilian and military leader in Massalit-majority neighborhoods. That context is necessary, but it does not diminish the prohibition on killing a detainee or replace the need to identify individual responsibility through reliable evidence.
The final television appeal
On 14 June 2023, after intense attacks across El Geneina, Abbakar spoke to Al-Hadath television. He said civilians were being killed in large numbers, that wounded people could not obtain treatment and that the international community needed to intervene. He accused the RSF and allied militias of violence against civilians and used the word genocide to describe what was happening.
Human Rights Watch reconstructed the day from interviews and verified videos. Abbakar was sheltering in an evacuated UNICEF compound near his damaged office. He later went toward the Central Reserve Police headquarters, reportedly trying to secure help evacuating wounded people toward Chad. An adviser told the organization that RSF forces detained him there.
Custody and death
A video posted that evening and geolocated by Human Rights Watch showed Abbakar alive inside the RSF headquarters in the presence of the force's West Darfur commander, Gen. Abdel Rahman Joma'a Barakallah. Later videos showed a body identified as Abbakar's. The organization said it could establish custody immediately before the killing but could not determine the filming location of all later clips.
The RSF denied responsibility and attributed the killing to unspecified “outlaws.” Barakallah later said his forces had tried to escort the governor safely to Chad and were ambushed. Human Rights Watch's verified custody footage, witness evidence and later official sanctions materially contradict a simple claim that the RSF had no connection to the event, but the competing account belongs in the record because it was the force's stated position.
Sanctions before the trial
In September 2023, the United States imposed visa restrictions on Barakallah for involvement in a gross human-rights violation connected to the killing. In November 2024, the US Treasury sanctioned him and stated that he had played a key role in Abbakar's kidnapping and killing as part of the RSF campaign in West Darfur.
Sanctions are executive measures, not criminal convictions. They nevertheless matter to the chronology because they show that official attribution predated Sudan's 2026 verdict and relied on a separate administrative evidentiary process.
The in-absentia prosecution
A Sudanese court in army-controlled Port Sudan began proceedings in April 2025 against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, his brother Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo and fourteen others. None of the defendants was in the courtroom. The prosecution linked Abbakar's killing to wider wartime crimes in El Geneina.
On 12 July 2026, the Anti-Terrorism and Crimes Against the State Court sentenced all sixteen defendants to death in absentia. Reporting on the judgment identified Hemedti; his brothers Abdelrahim Dagalo and Al-Qoni Hamdan Dagalo; Barakallah; former deputy governor El-Tijani Al-Tahir Karshoum; other RSF officers; tribal leaders; and a pro-RSF activist among those convicted.
The court convicted the group on charges reported as including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, attacks on civilians and public property, and the governor's killing. Because the proceeding combined a specific homicide with much wider allegations, this file does not imply that every count rested on identical conduct or evidence.
What the verdict does—and does not—establish
The 2026 judgment is a criminal adjudication, but it has significant limits. The defendants were absent, the court functioned under authorities aligned with one party to the ongoing war, and no adversarial defense by the accused was reported. The court said the case would be referred to Sudan's Supreme Court for review and that authorities would seek arrests and extraditions through international channels.
An in-absentia conviction is not the same as custody, a completed appeal or enforcement. It is also distinct from the International Criminal Court's separate investigation into crimes in Darfur. No public ICC arrest warrant specifically resolving Abbakar's killing was located for this publication.
The wider El Geneina record
Abbakar's death came during a campaign in which United Nations experts estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina, predominantly from the Massalit community. Human Rights Watch concluded that RSF forces and allied militias committed ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Those findings provide the setting for the governor's killing, but the archive maintains a separate case page because his detention, death and later prosecution have a discrete evidentiary and judicial record.
The killing accelerated the collapse of Massalit defenses and the flight of civilians from the city. Witnesses described thousands leaving toward Ardamata and Chad. The human consequence extended well beyond a senior official: his death removed a negotiator and authority figure at the moment communities were seeking evacuation and protection.
Current status
Sixteen defendants were convicted and sentenced to death in absentia on 12 July 2026. The Port Sudan court said the judgment would go to the Supreme Court and that authorities would seek arrest and extradition. No enforcement or completed Supreme Court disposition was located by the publication date.
The file is therefore classified as “adjudicated — in-absentia convictions; review and enforcement pending.” It does not mark the case as finally exhausted, nor does it minimize the independent video, witness and sanctions record concerning Barakallah's role.
Questions that remain
The central unresolved questions are whether any defendant will be arrested, whether Sudan's Supreme Court will affirm the judgment, and whether a future proceeding with the accused present will test the evidence adversarially. The relationship between the domestic case and any future ICC action also remains open.