The British government was aware as early as May 2024 that Ethiopia appeared to be backing the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s civil war, but chose not to make the intelligence public because of pressure from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a parliamentary committee will hear on Tuesday.
Nathaniel Raymond, an American human rights investigator at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), is due to tell the Commons international development committee that officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told him that “significant private pressure” from the UAE meant the UK could not divulge information linking both Ethiopia and the Emirates to the paramilitary group. Raymond will allege that the FCDO prioritised the UK’s “economic, security and diplomatic relationships with the UAE above preventing the intentional starvation and genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians living in El Fasher”.
Phone tracking links Ethiopia and UAE to RSF
The evidence of Ethiopian and Emirati involvement was gathered by HRL over three years and includes encrypted messages, internal meeting notes, memos and phone records. Raymond shared this data when he met FCDO officials in London on 15 May 2024, during discussions about El Fasher’s worsening plight.
HRL had tracked mobile phones moving between Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and RSF-held territory in Sudan. Some handsets moved from RSF locations to addresses in the UAE, which the lab believes were shell companies linked to the RSF’s deputy commander, Abdul Rahim Dagalo. One phone made the journey from Addis Ababa to Abu Dhabi in just four hours, despite no official air traffic data or scheduled commercial flights matching the route, indicating deliberate attempts to evade detection.
According to Raymond’s testimony, FCDO officials requested that he publicly release the phone data analysis linking UAE-based facilities to the RSF because the UK government could not. “They told me that the UK was facing significant private pressure behind the scenes from the UAE, limiting its ability to affect the situation,” Raymond will tell MPs. “FCDO personnel suggested that HRL releasing this information could help neutralise these efforts by UAE to prevent the UK from linking them to the armament of the RSF.”
At the time, HRL could not share the telecommunications data publicly because it would compromise sources and operational methods. However, the lab secretly shared the data with the United States to support sanctions against Dagalo-linked shell companies.
Fall of El Fasher and attempts to downplay death toll
Raymond’s testimony also focuses on what he describes as the UK’s “failed efforts to prevent the mass killing” of tens of thousands of people during the RSF’s genocidal massacre in El Fasher. The city fell to the RSF in October 2025 after an 18-month siege, a disaster humanitarian experts consider the worst war crime of Sudan’s civil war, marked by mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing.
After the fall, Raymond privately briefed the international development committee that at least 60,000 civilians had been killed. An FCDO atrocity-prevention official then contacted him to ask if the figure was too high. Raymond responded that his number did not include deaths from famine or the RSF’s bombardment of the city during its siege. “I explained the math. I stated that, in reality, the number of people that the RSF systematically killed after capturing the city could have been higher,” Raymond said. “The FCDO official and I discussed numbers further. I came to believe that this estimate of at least 60,000 people killed by the RSF was a political problem for the FCDO.”
Based on the encrypted records between HRL and the FCDO, Raymond will also reveal that on 26 September 2025 – as El Fasher was about to fall – a British UN official “expressed despair about the lack of any possible action by the Starmer government”, with intelligence indicating mass atrocities were inevitable.
UK opted for ‘least ambitious’ atrocity prevention plan
The committee is investigating the UK’s response to atrocity prevention after reports about the FCDO’s handling of the RSF’s seizure of El Fasher. One internal FCDO report, dated October 2025, documented the government’s decision to adopt the “least ambitious” of four proposed atrocity prevention plans for Sudan, citing “resource constraints”. That decision was made halfway through the 18-month siege of El Fasher, despite warnings of impending genocide.
Raymond will tell MPs that the UK’s position as “penholder”, or lead country, on Sudan at the UN Security Council made its role vital. “The UK was our best hope at that time for stopping what we believed would become one of the single largest mass-casualty events of the 21st century,” he will say.
Ethiopia’s role and denials
Ethiopia’s involvement in Sudan’s civil war did not become public until early this year. In February 2026, Reuters reported that Addis Ababa was hosting a secret training camp for RSF fighters, backed by Ethiopia’s close ally, the UAE. Ethiopia has rebutted those reports, as has the UAE, which has consistently denied accusations that it funds and arms the RSF.
Additional concerns have been raised about UK-manufactured military equipment found in Sudan, used by the RSF, and the UK government’s approval of further arms exports to the UAE despite accusations that the Emirates supplies weapons to the paramilitary group. A whistleblower previously alleged that warnings of possible “genocide” in Sudan were removed from a UK risk assessment by FCDO officials, potentially to protect the UAE.
Raymond’s revelations come as the committee examines whether the UK government’s relationship with the UAE took precedence over preventing mass atrocities in Darfur. The FCDO has been contacted for comment.
