France and the US destroy the passports of Sudanese visa applicants, leaving them in the war zone

Sudanese army soldiers stand by their car on a brick road in Khartoum. Credit: Getty

Washington and Paris have admitted that their diplomats destroyed the passports of Sudanese visa applicants, trapping them in the war-torn country.

France and the US say their diplomats were simply following protocol to keep sensitive documents from falling into the wrong hands, but that hasn't assuaged the outrage of Sudanese citizens who are now stranded in the war zone.

«I hear from my windows of warplanes and bombing, I'm stuck here with no way out,» Selma Ali, an engineer who filed her passport with the US embassy three days before the start of the war, told The New York Times, which first reported that the travel documents had been destroyed.

When fighting broke out on April 15 between the rival forces of Sudan's two top generals — army chief Abdel Fattah al-Buran and paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daghlo — foreign diplomats caught in the crossfire fled Khartoum. was the situation. rush to evacuate embassies, many of which, including the British, left behind passports that were submitted for visa applications. No government has publicly stated how many documents have been abandoned or destroyed.

The British government has said that any documents left behind at its facilities in Sudan will be «secured».

“We recognize that this is an extremely difficult situation. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and the UK government is working to find solutions for those affected,” an FCDO spokesman said last month.

But a US State Department spokesman said it was “standard operating procedure”. «to destroy documents that «could fall into the wrong hands and be misused.»

«Because security conditions prevented us from returning these passports safely, we followed our procedure to destroy them, and not to leave. for the unprotected.”

The US has previously faced criticism after admitting the destruction of Afghan passports left at the US embassy in Kabul when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. In this case, Afghan citizens could apply for new passports from the new Taliban government.

In Sudan, the office issuing new passports is closed due to fighting in the capital.