Surviving the RSF detention centres, a couple recount their days

30 September 2025

“I held my dead child in my arms all night after giving birth to him inside the Rapid Support Forces detention cente. I gave birth to him with all the sorrow in the world, amidst cruelty and suffering that I cannot express,” Salfa Mohamed Ali told Ayin. 

Salfa was seven months pregnant when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) arrested her and Shadi Abdullah, her husband, on the suspicion of collaborating with the national army. The young couple, displaced by the conflict and residing in Port Sudan, had only returned to Khartoum to see if they could collect their belongings. 

The newly wedded couple were separated and taken to different detention centres in Riyadh where the RSF intelligence department is located, Salfa added. She saw women and children being beaten, sometimes raped. “One of the worst things I saw was a woman being beaten to death because they didn’t believe her.” To leave the RSF detention centre in Riyadh, Salfa said, there were only two options: pay a bribe or offer yourself to one of the officers.

The RSF held Shadi Abdullah in an underground detention centre for five months, struggling with limited water and food and frequent beatings. Eventually the couple were transferred to Soba Prison in Khartoum which proved even worse. The RSF guards tortured Shadi to the point his foot was injured, even rotting, and he remained bed ridden for seven months. Salfa noted that fellow female inmates lived in constant fear of soldiers entering their cells at random moments and mistreat them at their will. Soldiers beat Salfa while nine months pregnant and she lost her child. 

The above account from this young couple, now in exile, is unfortunately not a solitary affair, local human rights activists told Ayin.