Hemedti

Sources differ on Hemetti's date of birth, with various publications placing it at differing points between 1973 and 1975.

The nephew of Juma Dagalo, chief of the Rizeigat tribe of the nomadic Baggara Arabs, Hemetti attended primary school up to third grade and received no other formal education.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (محمد حمدان دقلو, born 1974 or 1975), generally referred to mononymously as Hemedti (حميدتي), Hemetti, Hemeti, or Hemitte ("little Mohamed"), is a Janjaweed leader from the Rizeigat tribe in Darfur, who was the Deputy head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) following the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état.

He moved to North Darfur and then settled in South Darfur in 1987.

He is a member of the Awlad Mansour sub-section of the Mahariya tribe, which is part of the camel-herding (Abbala) Northern Rizeigat tribal confederation.

Hemetti may have traded camels prior to the War in Darfur.

This claim was called into question with at least one source instead calling him "a highwayman."

However this claim was later debunked by Jerome Tubiana, a researcher, journalist and the International Crisis Group's former senior Sudan analyst.

He was one of the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide.

He was appointed brigadier–general in the newly created Rapid Support Forces (RSF) by the 1989–2019 government of Omar al-Bashir, who,, is a fugitive indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Hemetti became a leader of the Janjaweed during the War in Darfur that started in 2003 and an "amir" in the Border Guards in the same year.

Hemetti 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.

Hemetti was the leader of one of the Rizeigat militias who killed 126 villagers in Adwa in South Darfur in a methodical, systematic attack starting on 23 November 2004 at 6am.

The militias burned all the houses, and burned some bodies and threw others in wells to hide evidence of the massacre.

The militias shot male villagers immediately, raped young girls and detained women for two days.

Hemetti stated to African Union officials that the massacre had been planned in coordination with government soldiers over several months.

Since 2013, Hemetti has commanded the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF was created in 2013 under the leadership of Hemetti, out of former Janjaweed groups of fighters, several of whose leaders and supporters (Ahmed Haroun, Ali Kushayb, Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein, in addition to al-Bashir) have been indicted for war crimes by the ICC.

Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih claimed that the soldiers commanded by Hemetti "committed countless war crimes" during the war.

A European diplomat interviewed by The National claimed that Hemetti aims to "distance himself" from the war crimes that occurred during the war.

Niemat Ahmadi, the founder of the Darfur Women Action Group, stated that Hemetti became well known during the War in Darfur "because of the people he killed, the number of villages he destroyed, the many women who were raped".

Sudan researcher Eric Reeves estimated that it is "likely" that Hemetti has "accumulated more Sudanese blood on his hands in conflict in Darfur and [in the conflict in] South Kordofan—as well as in Khartoum and elsewhere—than any other man in the country" and that Hemetti's management of the war was "by means of serial atrocity crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity".

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.

In 2014, the RSF, led by Hemetti, carried out the "Operation Decisive Summer" in South Darfur and North Darfur from late February to early May 2014, during which they carried out "killings, mass rape and torture of civilians; the forced displacement of entire communities; the destruction of the physical infrastructure necessary for sustaining life in the harsh desert environment including wells, food stores, shelter, and farming implements."

RSF members under Hemetti's command repeatedly attacked and burned 10 towns in South Darfur, mostly during the two days starting 27 February 2014.

Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported killings of civilians and rapes by RSF personnel.

Sudan Liberation Movement/Army rebels of Minni Minawi's faction (SLA/MM) had been present in some of the towns but had left them at the time of the crimes against humanity carried out under Hemetti's command.

Witnesses reported men shot in the head by the RSF after having been forced to lie on the ground, and women selected for rape in the bush.

Khalil, a witness from Hiraiga, stated that he saw Hemetti enter Hiraiga with other RSF members on the day that seven women, whom Khalil named, were raped either in Hiraiga or in Afouna nearby.

In the village of Um Bargarain, Hemetti's RSF separated the men from the children and assassinated the men.

He was considered by The Economist to be the most powerful person in Sudan as of early July 2019.

On 21 August 2019, the TMC transferred power to the civilian–military Transitional Sovereignty Council, of which Hemetti is a member.

Under Article 19 of the August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration, Hemetti and the other Sovereignty Council members were to be ineligible to run in the 2022 Sudanese general election.

As of 2019, Hemeti 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 Transitional Military Council, Hemetti signed a Political Agreement on 17 July 2019 and a 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.

In September 2019, Hemetti helped negotiate a peace deal between groups in armed conflict in Port Sudan.

Hemetti took part in the 2021 Sudan coup d'état, but has since distanced himself from it; in February 2023 he called it a "mistake".

The comments were part of a growing rift between him and army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

In April 2023, Dagalo mobilized the RSF against al-Burhan's government, claiming to capture key government sites, though al-Burhan has disputed this.

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.