A Sudanese court on Thursday sentenced six members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to death for killing seven people, including four high school students, during the peaceful protests in North Kordofan.
During the sentencing, families of the victims demanded retribution and refused the pardon.
The convicts are members of RSF, led by the deputy head of the Transitional Sovereign Council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as "Hemedti."
Presiding judge Ahmed Hassan el-Rahama handed down the sentence in the presence of Acting Attorney General Mubarak Mahmoud Osman.
Rahama said that the defendants were convicted of premeditated murder and criminal association.
The judge decided to convict the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and eighth defendants of the crime of joint premeditated murder. A seventh defendant's case was referred to the Juvenile Court, as he was still a minor when the massacre was committed.
The victims were killed by RSF snipers who were securing a bank in the city center during the peaceful demonstrations of high school students against the increase in public transportation fees, bread, and power cuts.
The horrific killings in El-Obeid sparked angry protests throughout the country against the Transitional Military Council, which obstructed the handover of power to the civil forces.
Last May, a court in Omdurman sentenced a former RSF officer to death for running over a young man with an SUV and killing him during the famous sit-in dispersal massacre in June 2019.
Another court issued a death sentence against 29 members of the Security and Intelligence Service. They were convicted of killing teacher Ahmed al-Khair in the Halfa region at the beginning of the protests against the ousted President Omar al-Bashir in 2018.
The Criminal Court in central Khartoum is looking into the killing of university student Mahjoub al-Taj, 20, as a result of torture and beatings in January 2019. The accused are officers and members of al-Bashir's security apparatus.
