A Sudanese court Monday sentenced a senior officer with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to death for the murder of a demonstrator as a Khartoum protest camp was broken up in 2019, a lawyer said.
"The court issued a verdict indicting the accused officer in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Article 130 (premeditated murder) of the Criminal Code... and sentenced him to death by hanging," Mahmoud al-Sheikh, a lawyer in the case, told AFP.
The verdict in the trial which began last July is subject to appeal.
In June 2019, armed men in military fatigues violently dispersed a protest camp in the capital Khartoum leaving at least 128 dead in a days-long crackdown.
The RSF officer, Mohieldin Mohamed Youssef, was convicted of killing protester Hanafi Abdel-Shakour by mowing him down with his car.
The violence came two months after long-time president Omar al-Bashir was deposed in April 2019 following months-long, youth-led demonstrations.
The RSF is led by commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo who is a senior member of both the military council that replaced Bashir and the subsequent power-sharing ruling body.
Families of victims, including Abdel-Shakour's, have since been calling on authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The ruling generals, who ran the country at the time, denied ordering the bloody dispersal but a probe later found that some members of the RSF and other security forces were involved in the killings.
The government-commissioned investigation, formed in November 2019, has yet to release its final report.
Sudan has been led since August 2019 by a civilian-majority transitional administration, which has vowed to ensure justice for victims and their families.
