UAE senior government links to Colombian mercenary support to the RSF

10 October 2025

A top UAE government official and an Emirati businessman are suppliers of Colombian mercenaries to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to a new investigation by the research organisation The Sentry. 

Corporate records indicate that Emirati businessman Mohamed Hamdan Alzaabi and Ahmed Mohamed Al Humairi, the Secretary-General of the Presidential Court and top bureaucrat in the UAE, supplied potentially hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through their firm, Global Security Services Group (GSSG). The firm was set up in 2016 by Al Humairi, and he transferred his shares to his long-time business associate Alzaabi the following year, the Sentry reported.

Last year, GSSG contracted the Colombian security recruitment agency, Academy for Security Instruction (or A4SI), to supply hundreds of former Colombian soldiers to work in Sudan, according to leaked documents obtained by Colombian media outlet La Silla Vacía. Former and current Colombian mercenaries deployed to Sudan have reported being trained in drone warfare in Abu Dhabi and rotated through a UAE-controlled military base at Bosaso in Puntland, Somalia.

“We now know exactly how they [Colombian mercenaries] were hired and the companies involved in their hiring. These mercenaries are training the RSF militia in the use of high-tech weaponry, including drones, and they have also been videoed training very young soldiers, possibly child soldiers, and firing mortars into El Fasher,” Sentry Senior Investigator Nick Donovan told Ayin. 

The Sentry’s report is part of a growing body of evidence linking the government of the UAE with Sudan’s RSF through various intermediaries, including prominent Emirati businessmen. In a previous report, The Sentry detailed the activities of RSF front companies operating in the UAE.

Both warring parties continue to seek a military solution to Sudan’s war, now in its third year, through the support of foreign backers, Donovan added. “The RSF needs international support to sustain itself over the long period, and likely the army does too,” he said.

“The supply of weapons, money, fuel, and personnel to the belligerents is prolonging the war and increasing civilian harm. Peace talks usually happen when one or both sides feel that they can’t win using military means alone and that’s when they seriously engage in peace talks.”