Sudanese lawyers announced on Monday that legal measures had been taken against travel agencies that have contributed to deceiving Sudanese youth by offering them work contracts with the Emirati Black Shield Security Services then transferring them to Libya instead.

This came during a press conference held in the capital, Khartoum, by 15 lawyers who presented themselves as a volunteering defence committee that undertook to file a lawsuit on behalf of Sudanese youth who returned from the Emirates.

At the conference, attorney Suleiman Al-Jadi, a representative of the defence committee, said: “We have taken legal measures against travel agencies in Khartoum.”

He added: “We submitted a request to the Chief Justice of Sudan to prosecute Black Shield Company, by international criminal law,” without revealing the nature of the procedures undertaken by the Sudanese prosecution.

Al-Jadi pointed out that the tragedy faced by Sudanese youth is considered as a cross-border crime.

He continued: “What the Sudanese youth have been subjected to is a crime under local and international laws, and everyone should do everything in their power to defend the victims under local and international laws.”

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On 29 January, the Sudanese Council of Ministers discussed the crisis of the Sudanese contractors with the Emirati Black Shield Company, following continuous protests staged by their families in Khartoum.

Recently, social media activists have released pictures of Sudanese youth preparing to leave the city of Ras Lanuf in Libya, on a plane carrying 275 Sudanese on their way back to Khartoum, after the protests intensified their dispatch.

Ras Lanuf is an industrial, residential city in northern Libya, which is the headquarters of the Ras Lanuf oil refinery.

Recently, the UAE Black Shield Company said, in a statement of which the Anadolu Agency obtained a copy, that it is a private security services company, and denied all allegations of deceiving its workers regarding the nature of the work, its system, its location or its employees.

On 25 December 2019, The Guardian published a report on the “involvement” of Abu Dhabi in financing the transport of mercenaries to fight in Libya alongside the militias of retired Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar.

Since 4 April, Haftar militias, backed by the UAE with arms and mercenaries, have launched an offensive to control the capital, Tripoli, the headquarters of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA).

This attack has led to aborting the efforts made by the United Nations to hold talks between Libyans, within the framework of an international road map to address the Libyan conflict.