00:20These fighters in the Sahara Desert are the Mushtaraka,
00:24the Joint Protection Force for Darfur.
00:27They are fighting in Sudan's civil war,
00:30alongside the Sudanese army,
00:32against their common enemy,
00:34the Rapid Support Forces,
00:36known as the RSL.
00:41On November 21st, 2024,
00:43the Mushtaraka captured a convoy out in the desert,
00:47somewhere between Libya and Sudan.
00:49They showed off their spoils.
00:51They found ID papers and documents,
01:01written in Spanish.
01:07And crates of weapons.
01:09The Sudanese army and their allies accused the United Arab Emirates
01:25of supporting their enemy, the RSF.
01:30Experts from the United Nations say the allegations are credible.
01:34The UAE, its leader Mohammed Ben Zayed,
01:36seen here with the leader of the RSF before the war,
01:39denies sending weapons to the rebels.
01:44In the videos they filmed in the desert,
01:46the Mushtaraka filmed inscriptions on the weapons they captured.
01:50The inscriptions filmed in the desert between Libya and Sudan,
02:00led our investigation to Europe.
02:03And proof that the weapons were made in Bulgaria,
02:07they were purchased by the Army of the United Arab Emirates,
02:10and later showed up in Sudan.
02:13This despite the fact that Sudan has been subject
02:16to a European arms embargo since 1994.
02:20A new civil war has been raging since 2023,
02:24when the RSF militia rose up against its former ally,
02:28the Sudanese army.
02:31How did these weapons end up in Sudan?
02:34And who is responsible?
02:36The crates captured by the Mushtaraka in the desert
02:49bore this symbol, the international sign for class 1 explosives.
02:53A label with names in Cyrillic script
02:56and the words 81mm mortar HE for high explosive.
03:01The crates also had an international shipment code
03:06with the initials BG for Bulgaria.
03:10Inside the mortar bombs are in cardboard tubes,
03:13marked with a six-digit code, starting with 46.
03:17In Bulgaria the number 46 refers to a specific manufacturer.
03:22Dunarit is an arms manufacturer based in northern Bulgaria,
03:36specialized in making artillery shells and mortar bombs of all calibres,
03:41including 81mm bombs equipped with M6 detonators,
03:46like the weapons captured in Sudan.
03:49Bulgaria has been a member of the European Union since 2007.
03:54It is illegal to export European-made weapons to Sudan.
03:59There's an EU arms embargo on Sudan
04:01that definitely covers that kind of equipment.
04:03There's a very clear EU policy.
04:06There's some exceptions,
04:09but I can't see how a transfer that was going on to Sudan
04:14could possibly be covered by those exceptions.
04:17So it's definitely a violation of the EU policy.
04:20We wanted to know more,
04:22so we called the company and spoke to its CEO.
04:26This contract was carried out in accordance with all applicable regulations.
04:31The authorities in Bulgaria regulate such transactions.
04:35Mr. Petrov also sent us an email.
04:41The ammunition was exported to the government of a country
04:44that is not subject to international restrictions.
04:47All the documents concerning the case are available to the competent authorities,
04:52notably the certificate of delivery.
04:54We were able to obtain the certificate of delivery,
05:04a document in which the purchaser confirms receiving mortar bombs made by Dunarit.
05:10Dated August 16th, 2020,
05:13it gave a list of tens of thousands of mortar bombs.
05:17They had been delivered in January and February 2020.
05:21The purchaser was listed as the United Arab Emirates GHQ Armed Forces.
05:27The document also names an Emirati importer,
05:30the International Golden Group.
05:32The International Golden Group was founded in 2002.
05:37They were founded as a semi-private company with strong links to the government.
05:42They've been a supplier to the UAE forces as well as to the Ministry of the Interior.
05:48They've also been implicated in the diversion of arms to Libya by the UN panel of experts.
05:57Libya, like Sudan, is under international arms embargoes.
06:01By the EU and the UN.
06:04The International Golden Group is regularly cited in UN reports on illegal shipments to Libya.
06:11In 2013, for purchasing machine gun rounds made in Albania.
06:16In 2016, assault rifles made in Bulgaria.
06:21And in 2022, mortar bombs made in Serbia, used to booby trap civilians in Libya.
06:30The UN reports say the weapons were found in areas occupied by the forces of General Khalifa Haftar,
06:39the Libyan strongman who controls most of eastern Libya.
06:43UN experts have accused the UAE of sending weapons to General Haftar for years.
06:48The Gulf state is now accused of doing the same for the RSF in Sudan.
06:54Well, the origin of Khalifa Haftar is a combat leader of the Emirates Arab Emirates.
07:00It's the US.
07:01It's the US.
07:02It's the state that supports the rapid support forces.
07:06There are credible reports that the Emirates Arab Emirates have requested
07:07the rapid support of heavy support forces at the time of Haftar,
07:12which has made this link to a support from the part of the war.
07:15There is a support from Haftar from the beginning of the war, even before the war.
07:25But how did weapons purchased by a company that is regularly sited in illegal shipments to Libya
07:32end up across the border in Sudan?
07:36The ID papers found in the desert belonged to a man from Colombia. We ll call him Christian L.
07:57The documents indicate that Christian L. had been an officer in the Colombian military.
08:02On his social media accounts, he documented his voyage. He left Colombia in October 2024.
08:09He made a stop in Paris before arriving in the UAE, the capital Abu Dhabi.
08:17Two weeks later, he was in Libya, in an area controlled by General Haftar s forces.
08:23His convoy was attacked four days later, across the border in Sudan.
08:28That is where his ID papers were filmed. There's no trace of what happened to him.
08:35According to the Colombian media, Christian L. was one of around 300 former Colombian soldiers sent to Sudan to support the RSF,
08:45after signing agreements with a security company in the Emirates.
08:50Sudan analyst Suleiman Baldov says the route that Christian L. had been on is well trafficked.
08:57This route has always existed, and it comprends mainly the city of Khufra, in the south of Libya.
09:05There are so many commerce and traffic lines with the population of Darfur.
09:11And it is not surprising that they were exploited for the security support that the Arab Emirates
09:19are in the force of rapid support through their local ally in Sudan, that is, General Haftar.
09:26So, a convoy was attacked by fighters allied with the Sudanese army.
09:31It was transporting mercenaries from Colombia and weapons made in Europe.
09:36The mortar bombs had been purchased by a company regularly sighted in reports of illegal weapons shipments to Libya,
09:43the Emirates-based International Golden Group.
09:46As for the mercenaries, one of them filmed his last video in eastern Libya, shortly before crossing into Sudan.
09:53A few weeks earlier, he had transited through the UAE, the Gulf state that is accused by Sudanese fighters of backing the rebels.
10:02The kind of weapons purchased by the UAE have a devastating effect on the ground.
10:21The pro-government forces who captured the convoy say it was on its way to reinforce the RSF.
10:27In this video posted by a pro-RSF account in September 2023, fighters are seen firing a mortar.
10:36The shells were made by Dunarit.
10:38The Bulgarian company's code 46 is visible on the shells in the foreground of the image.
10:44The video was published by an anonymous Sudanese fighter on TikTok, who follows multiple RSF accounts,
10:51suggesting RSF fighters had been using the Bulgarian-made weapons even before the convoy was intercepted in November 2024.
11:00Since the beginning of the civil war, there were cases where the mortals were found in the markets, in hospitals,
11:10in the camps of displaced people, including the village of El Fasher.
11:14And so, there are several cases in which the use of illegal use of this type of ammunition should be used to be the cause of serious violations of international law.
11:27We spoke to Mohamed Adam, who works for a victim's support group in one of the camps in Darfur.
11:33The war took place because of the war, whose victims were caught in the threat,
11:47and even the victims were caught up under the attack.
11:51The people who were in the area were more than 500 people.
11:55They were more than 500 people.
11:58The people who were in the area were more than 10 or 20.
12:03They were more than 30 people.
12:05They were more than 30 people.
12:12We contacted the UAE's Ministry of Defence
12:15and the International Golden Group.
12:17We wanted to ask if they could explain how the mortar bombs they had purchased
12:21ended up in Sudan,
12:23and whether they had been on their way to the RSF.
12:26Thank you for calling International Golden Group.
12:29They did not respond.
12:32On March 6th, 2025,
12:34the Sudanese government filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice,
12:39accusing the United Arab Emirates of conspiring to commit genocide in Darfur
12:45by backing the RSF with financial support,
12:48mercenaries,
12:50and large shipments of arms.
12:53All this time,
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12:58the international and national security system.
12:59The American Empire
13:01is in a state of the Central Republic.
13:02And Garcia came out.
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13:04the United Arab Emirates of the Republic.
13:06The National Republic is now a leader in the country where the Russian Empire
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