Sudan sentences RSF chief Dagalo to death in absentia, and the war grinds on

On 13 July 2026 a Sudanese court convicted Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitary chief better known as Hemeti, in absentia and sentenced him to death alongside 15 Rapid Support Forces commanders and allies. The ruling, reported on the same morning by BBC News and The Africa Report, found the defendants responsible for the killing of a regional governor and for war crimes committed during the civil war that has fractured the country since April 2023. The judgment was handed down in Khartoum, where, according to a 11 July Africa News dispatch, residents are cautiously returning to streets and shops after the army recaptured central districts from the RSF earlier this summer.

Sudan's war is now in its fourth calendar year. It is also entering a judicial phase. The death sentence is the highest-profile signal yet that the army-led authorities in Port Sudan intend to put the paramilitary's leadership in the dock, not at the negotiating table. Whether the courtroom is a substitute for a peace process, or a prelude to one, will define the country's next chapter.

A court, not a ceasefire

The conviction was not a single-trial reckoning. Reporting from The Africa Report on 13 July identifies the trigger charge as the killing of a regional governor, with additional war-crimes counts that the RSF's senior commanders are alleged to have ordered or facilitated. Sentencing in absentia is the practical default: the paramilitary still controls large tracts of Darfur and parts of Kordofan, and its leadership has not been in Sudanese government custody since fighting broke out in 2023.

Khartoum's framing matters. By trying senior paramilitary figures in domestic courts, the authorities narrow the space for either an international tribunal or a transitional-justice bargain that might trade amnesty for disarmament. Domestic war-crimes trials carry their own legitimacy risk when the courts sit in territory held by one party to the conflict. The Africa Report's coverage makes clear that the verdict is part of a legal architecture, not a one-off ruling; it sets a template under which further RSF commanders can be tried on similar grounds.

Khartoum breathes, briefly

The judicial push is running in parallel with a fragile return to ordinary life. Africa News reported on 11 July that residents of Khartoum and several towns in central Sudan have begun reopening shops, schools and clinics after the army's recapture of the capital earlier in the summer. The dispatch frames the recovery as cautious: the fear of another RSF counter-attack lingers, even as the army seals the approaches to the city and patrols the river crossings.

The asymmetry is the story. In Khartoum, street vendors and civil servants are back at work; in el-Fasher and across much of Darfur, fighting continues and aid corridors remain precarious. The two trajectories have been the war's defining feature since the army consolidated control of the centre: a slow, uneven restoration of state authority along the Nile, alongside a stubborn and well-armed RSF presence in the west. The death sentence lands on a country that is half-recovered and half-still-at-war, and the verdict will read very differently in each half.

What the RSF actually controls

The paramilitary's territorial footprint complicates any reading of the trial as a decisive blow. Hemeti, a former Janjawoord militia leader whose forces were formally incorporated into the security services under Omar al-Bashir before turning on the army in 2023, still commands a faction with deep Darfur recruitment networks and cross-border supply lines into Chad and Libya. A verdict in Khartoum reaches him only as a message.

The message has at least three audiences. The first is the paramilitary's own mid-ranking officers, several of whom have shown signs of hedging as the army's position in the centre has hardened. A capital-punishment verdict quietly raises the cost of staying in the field. The second is Sudan's neighbours, who will now be pressed by Khartoum to treat RSF-linked figures as indicted war criminals rather than negotiating partners. The third is the United Arab Emirates, which Western and African rights groups have long accused of arming and financing the RSF; a formal conviction is the kind of document activists can hand to prosecutors in third jurisdictions, even if those cases go nowhere.

Stakes: the rest of 2026

A court judgment does not end a civil war. What it can do is shape the bargaining that follows. If the army's commanders believe they can impose terms on a surrendering RSF, they will prefer a courtroom track; if they fear the paramilitary can hold its western strongholds indefinitely, they will return to talks under mediation from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the African Union or IGAD. The next six months will be read off Khartoum's ability to consolidate the centre while denying the RSF a parallel capital in the west.

For civilians, the verdict changes nothing that the war had not already changed. Death sentences handed down in absentia are most useful to the side that issues them when they can be backed up by an army on the ground. The Africa News reporting from 11 July shows Khartoum edging back toward functioning; BBC's coverage on 13 July shows the authorities reaching for the strongest legal language their courts can issue. Whether the two tracks converge or diverge is the only question that matters for the rest of 2026.