THE death of a Sudanese man seized by plain-clothes officers while drinking at a cafe has revived calls for the country’s notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to be disbanded.

Bahaa el-Din Nouri was abducted on December 16 and his corpse was identified in a morgue in Omdurman, the city facing capital Khartoum across the Nile, five days later.

Culture and Information Minister Faisal Mohammed Saleh says an initial investigation found that he had “died while being interrogated” by the RSF.

The paramilitary organisation is mostly composed of former Janjaweed fighters — the force responsible for atrocities in Darfur over the past two decades. 

The paramilitary group’s spokesman Brigadier-General Gamal Homa said that an investigation was underway and that the head of its intelligence unit and officers involved had been suspended.

Its chief General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, appointed by long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir who was removed from office in April 2019 following a revolutionary uprising lasting months, is now deputy head of Sudan’s “sovereign council.”

He is accused by opposition forces including the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) of planning permanent military rule.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, which with the SCP was one of the main forces in the uprising that toppled Mr Bashir, called for the closure of all detention centres run by the RSF.

The SCP called for the RSF to be disbanded in July last year because of its responsibility for the massacre of over 100 protesters at a Khartoum sit-in on June 3. But it continues to operate and is also reported to provide troops fighting for Saudi Arabia in Yemen and for rebel General Khalifa Haftar in Libya.