UN report: UAE-based firm sent Colombian mercenaries to Sudan’s RSF – their role in El Fasher, sources say

Global Security Services Group (GSSG), a company based in the United Arab Emirates with close ties to the Abu Dhabi government, recruited Colombian mercenaries and sent them to Sudan to fight with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This is the conclusion of a confidential report by the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, submitted to the Security Council last week. The text was obtained and presented on Friday, November 6 by Middle East Eye.

It is the experts’ fourth quarterly update, marked “strictly confidential” and not due to be made public. The investigators write that the UAE’s involvement in the recruitment is “established with certainty.”

From the Emirates and Puntland to El Fasher

The mercenaries’ route, as the report records it, passed through Libya, Somalia and Chad, countries where forces aligned with the Emirates control large territories. Training took place in Abu Dhabi, Ghayathi and Al Wathba inside the UAE, but also at the base of the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) at Bosaso in Somalia. That base, according to the investigators, was used as a transit or training station before dispatch to Sudan, and “the UAE military funded, trained and supervised the PMPF.”

In the field the Colombians provided combat and technical support, operated drones and artillery and supported the infantry. The report attributes to them a “significant role” in RSF operations in Darfur and especially in the siege and capture of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which fell in October 2025 after a siege of more than 500 days. In a letter included in the document, the UAE “rejects any accusation of unlawful activity in relation to the conflict in Sudan” and says it treats the mercenary allegations “with great seriousness.”

The same investigators had reached similar conclusions in an earlier report this year. When it was presented to the Security Council in July, the Emirati ambassador to the UN asked the investigators to “immediately correct the serious flaws” of the report, while Bahrain, a non-permanent Council member, has been blocking its publication for months. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission had already described a cross-border network supporting the RSF in Chad, Puntland, Libya and the Emirates, and the Security Council extended the arms embargo for Darfur only.

Sanctions already imposed

Sanctions over the recruitment of Colombians have already been imposed by Washington and London. The US Treasury sanctioned four individuals and four companies in December 2025, noting that since September 2024 hundreds of former Colombian soldiers have travelled to Sudan as infantry, gunners, drone operators and trainers, while some even trained children. A central figure of the network was a retired Colombian officer living in the UAE. Britain added in February to its sanctions list people who recruit foreign fighters, and the British government counts six rounds of sanctions since the start of the war, also targeting Colombian mercenaries.

The report comes as Lana Nusseibeh, one of the UAE’s leading diplomats, is seeking the post of the next UN Secretary-General, who will succeed António Guterres by the end of the year.