Sudan: Government and Militias Conspire in Darfur Killings
Major Massacre Shows State Complicity

(New York, April 23, 2004) - In a joint operation in the Darfur region of Sudan, government troops working with Arab
militias detained 136 African men whom the militias massacred hours later, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of attacks by Arab militias, known as janjaweed, in almost a month of research
inside Darfur. All but two of the attacks were carried out in conjunction with government forces.

"The janjaweed are no longer simply militias supported by the Sudanese government," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director
of Human Rights Watch. "These militias work in unison with government troops, with total impunity for their massive
crimes."

The 136 men, all members of the Fur ethnic group aged between 20 and 60, were rounded up in early March in two separate
sweeps in the Garsila and Mugjir areas in Wadi Saleh. They were then taken in army lorries to nearby valleys where they were
made to kneel before being killed with a bullet in the back of the neck.

Most of those killed had sought refuge in the Garsila and Mugjir areas after their villages were burned and pillaged by
government troops and janjaweed militiamen under the command of Ali Kwoshib, janjaweed commander in the Jebel Marra
area.

Human Rights Watch said many janjaweed fighters are organized into battalions that have the same structure as those in the
government army. They use the same weapons as regular soldiers and their leaders wear stripes on their uniforms that are
identical to those of the regular army. An increasing number of janjaweed fighters wear the same uniforms as government
soldiers. The only difference is that the janjaweed uniforms have a breast pocket badge depicting an armed man on
horseback.

Operations carried out by the janjaweed often enjoy air support from the government of Sudan, both aerial bombardment
before operations and helicopter reconnaissance afterwards to ensure the area is empty. In many villages, regular troops and
janjaweed forces establish a joint presence-often in the local police station-before going out to burn and pillage.

On the same day as the two massacres, March 5, nine Fur omdas (chiefs) who had been arrested a week earlier were shot dead
in government prisons in Garsila and Mugjir. Their families reported their deaths after being told to collect their bodies for
burial.

Villagers from the Garsila area told Human Rights Watch that they woke up on March 5 to find an area encompassing 32
villages surrounded by government troops and janjaweed. The government and militia forces then entered the villages and
began asking men where they came from. One hundred and four individuals-most of them people who had been displaced
from villages in the Zamey area south of Deleig-were taken to the government prison in Deleig, northeast of Garsila. That
same night, according to local people, 72 of the 104 were loaded into army trucks and driven two kilometers to a valley where
they were executed.

Human Rights Watch said that thirty-two of the men also rounded up in the Garsila sweep are still in detention, believed to be
at risk of torture and death.

Among the other 72, there was one survivor: a man left for dead. He crawled back to Deleig after the massacre, reaching the
village in the early hours of March 6, when he alerted local people to the killings. One of those he spoke to told Human
Rights Watch the government and janjaweed forces appeared to be targeting the populations of villages that had been
destroyed in an orgy of burning that began after Ali Kwoshib established a janjaweed base in Garsila in July 2003. The
survivor, who is recovering in Deleig and cannot be named, said he and the others selected for execution were taken to the
valley in army trucks and cars, "with janjaweed on horses" accompanying the government forces.

Another 65 men were reportedly executed in a similar operation in the Mugjir area some 80 kilometers east of Garsila. Details
of this killing are not available because there were no survivors.

The Wadi Saleh massacres conform to a well-established pattern of joint operations by government and janjaweed forces.
Until early this year, the janjaweed had the support but not the active participation of the government army in their operations.
In recent months, however, the vast majority of the attacks against the African population of Darfur have been joint attacks by
the regular army and the militias.

As Sheikh Abdullah Mohammed Hussein, the headman of Terbeba village, said after a joint government-janjaweed attack that
killed 31 people and wounded 12 in Terbeba, "They come together, they fight together and they leave together."

"It is imperative that all janjaweed forces withdraw from villages they have occupied and any barracks or garrisons nearby,"
said Roth. "Unless this happens, refugees and displaced people will never return to their farms and villages, whether there is a
ceasefire in place or not."
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For more information on human rights abuses in Darfur, please see Human Rights Watch report, "Darfur in Flames:
Atrocities in Western Sudan," at: http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0404/ and Human Rights Watch press release, "Monitor
Darfur Ceasefire," at: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/14/sudan8431.htm