Hemeti defends Sudan’s RSF as ‘protectors of the people’

The Deputy Chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemeti’, who is also commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), claims that the RSF foiled a plot for a massacre at the peaceful sit-in at the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 11 last year.

In a lengthy interview with udan 24 satellite channel, Hemeti said that on April 11, 13 tanks were moving from a military base El Mudaraat in southern Khartoum towards the sit-in, but the RSF intercepted them. “If we, who have been highly criticised and disliked, did not stop them, there would be a grave massacre,” he said.

Hemeti also accused some security forces affiliated with the former regime and other political parties of “distorting and discrediting the reputation of the RSF”, after the June 3 massacre. “But we will reveal them by name when the time comes,” he added. “The RSF was the only government institution that protected the people in the first four months after the downfall of the Al Bashir regime,” he added.

Hemeti further argued that some members in the Transitional Military Council – which was then the ruling entity – caused a diplomatic crisis with Qatar when they refused to welcome a diplomatic delegation headed by the Qatari foreign minister. “Actually, they were the ones who invited them and then embarrassed them to provoke a diplomatic crisis between the two countries. In fact, we have no problem with Qatar,” he claimed.

Also, he pointed out that “some military generals and officials of the deposed regime tried their best to overthrow the Transitional Military Council”. He added that they took advantages of the political situation when there were some differences between the TMC and the Forces for Freedom and Change.

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