Hemedti

Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa (born c. 1973–1975), commonly known by the nom de guerre Hemedti, is the military head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is involved in the Sudanese civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. He is also serving as the chairman of the presidential council of the de facto (unrecognized) Government of Peace and Unity since 2025.

A Janjaweed chief from the Rizeigat tribe in Darfur, Hemedti was one of the warlords leading the Janjaweed in the war in Darfur and is accused by several organizations to be one of the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide (2003–2005). Hemedti later joined the RSF and has served as its military head since 2013. He took part in the revolution against President Omar al-Bashir, and, following the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état, became the deputy head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC). On 21 August 2019, the TMC transferred power to the civilian–military Transitional Sovereignty Council, of which Hemedti is a member. As of 2019, Hemedti was considered one of the richest people in Sudan via his company, al-Junaid, which had a wide array of business interests including investment, mining, transport, car rental, iron and steel. On behalf of the TMC, Hemedti signed a political agreement on 17 July 2019 and the Draft Constitutional Declaration on 4 August 2019, together with Ahmed Rabee on behalf of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), as major steps in the 2019 Sudanese transition to democracy. Under Article 19 of the Draft Constitutional Declaration, Hemedti and the other Sovereignty Council members would be ineligible to run in the next Sudanese general election. In September 2019, Hemedti helped negotiate a peace deal between groups in armed conflict in Port Sudan.

In October 2021, Hemedti took part in army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's 2021 Sudan coup d'état, but a growing rift between him and al-Burhan caused him to call that coup a "mistake" in February 2023, and in April 2023 he mobilised the RSF against al-Burhan's government and captured key government sites (although al-Burhan disputed this), and thereby started the current Sudanese civil war.

According to Human Rights Watch and professor Eric Reeves, the RSF was responsible for crimes against humanity, including systematic killings of civilians and rapes, in Darfur in 2014 and 2015. Hemedti was also involved in the 23 November 2004 attack on the village of Adwa which resulted in a massacre and rape, and said that the attacks had been planned for months, earning him the sobriquet "Butcher of Darfur". According to Al Jazeera and The Daily Beast, the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the RSF, holds major responsibility for the 3 June 2019 Khartoum massacre.