Three years on, still no justice for Sudan ‘massacre’ victims

In the early morning of June 3, 2019, Amira Kabous called her son Mohamad Hisham after Sudanese security services had violently dispersed a sit-in protest in the capital, Khartoum. Unable to reach him, Kabous thought that Hisham was either helping his wounded friends or that he had lost his phone in the scramble.

She learned hours later that he was one of at least 120 people killed in what has been described as a “massacre”.

“My family spotted his body in a photograph on Facebook,” Kabous, the vice president of the Martyrs’ Families Organization, told Al Jazeera. “My [husband] then went to the hospital and after one hour he called to tell me that he found Mohamad.”

Three years after that harrowing day, victims’ families and survivors are still searching for justice.

In December 2019, the then civilian-military government tasked a committee with releasing a fact-finding report about the killings, and pressing charges against those believed to be responsible.

But the October 25 military coup that toppled the civilian administration, and derailed the country’s brief transition to democracy, destroyed the little faith that civil society groups had in the national probe.