KHARTOUM: Naked, hungry, raped and lying in her own urine, the woman said her captors after two days of misery handed her a phone. Call your friends and family, they said. Tell them to buy your freedom or you’ll be killed.
The 38-year-old said she screamed on the calls as horrified loved ones listened to her being tortured in a remote village in western Sudan.
Now safely in the capital, Khartoum, she looked through photos she took of her battered face and body after being freed in September. She wants them to serve as evidence to hold the attackers accountable.
“I thought about seeking justice one day,” she said. Identities of those who say they have been sexually assaulted have not been made public.
The UN calls sexual violence one of the “most defining features” of Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year. It says sexual assaults have soared since the war began but it did not have data on assaults by combatants.
