Secret dossier adds to evidence of chemical weapons in Sudan

Secretive bomb tests in the Sudanese desert. Suffocated scorpions, found dead on the floor of a weapons factory. Chlorine canisters taken from a water treatment plant in the war-torn capital. Sudan’s military has long denied American accusations that it used chemical weapons as part of the country’s devastating civil war. That accusation brought punishing U.S. sanctions on Sudan and its army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Yet the United States has never publicly substantiated the claim with proof. Now, a dossier of evidence shared with The New York Times by a Middle Eastern intelligence agency bolsters those allegations, describing how and why Sudan’s military developed and produced chemical weapons over six months in 2024. Photographs, videos, documents and intercepted communications portray a secretive Sudanese military unit said to have produced chlorine-based munitions for use against the Rapid Support Forces (R.S.F.), the paramilitary group the army is fighting for control of the country. The dossier contains bomb blueprints, details of an apparent effort to cover up the project after its discovery by the United States, and a suggestion that some of the chlorine used to make the bombs was sourced at a civilian water treatment center that received the chemical from international aid groups. The U.S. government appears to have taken the dossier seriously. Some of its visuals were shared with American intelligence and were used by American officials in January 2025 to assess whether Sudan had chemical weapons, according to two foreign officials and a former U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. A Sudanese military spokesman rejected the dossier’s findings as “baseless and without material foundation.” Noting that Sudan had signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, he threatened legal action against The Times in a U.S. court if the dossier’s contents were published. Much of the dossier, consisting of nearly 150 documents, images, videos and voice notes, as well as several thousand text messages, appears to come from the cellphones of senior Sudanese officers. It was provided on the condition that its source not be identified. Voice and text messages involving General al-Burhan suggest Sudan’s military chief had direct knowledge of the alleged chemical weapons effort, a key factor in the U.S. decision to sanction him in January 2025, The Times reported. Proving chemical weapons use is notoriously complicated. Experts who reviewed images from the dossier for The Times said they looked like a plausible chemical weapons effort, but cautioned they could be confirmed only through an investigation by impartial experts on the ground in Sudan. While chemical attacks during Syria’s civil war set off global outrage and led to American military strikes in 2017 and 2018, the Sudanese episode has received relatively little outside scrutiny. Elisabeth Waechter, a spokeswoman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said several countries had requested that the organization “obtain clarifications from Sudan regarding allegations of chemical weapon use.” The process is “ongoing,” she said. The pressure is coming mostly from the United States, which in June announced a second round of sanctions over chemical weapons as part of a broader effort to force Sudan’s military to agree to a ceasefire. Sudan’s military has responded to the U.S. measures with defiance, saying it does not trust the United States to be an impartial mediator in the conflict. A State Department spokesperson said in a statement that sanctions would remain until Sudan destroyed “all chemical weapons and production facilities under international verification.” Since Sudan’s war began in 2023, it has brought famine and disease and forced more than 12 million people from their homes. While both sides are accused of war crimes, the worst atrocities have been blamed on the military’s enemy, the R.S.F., which the United States and the United Nations say has committed genocide. The paramilitary group’s reputation touched a new low last year in El Fasher, a city in Darfur, where its fighters were credibly accused of starving, slaughtering and gang-raping fleeing civilians. The Sudanese military may have turned to chemical weapons to solve a problem early in the war. By mid-2024, the military had lost most of Khartoum, and its forces struggled to expel R.S.F. fighters embedded deep in the vast capital. In July, according to the dossier, Brig. Gen. Tariq Hussain, the head of the chlorine bomb project, proposed a solution: chlorine. In a message to colleagues that was later intercepted, General Hussain explained how the deadly gas could be weaponised to gain an edge in the battle for Khartoum. He circulated sketches of prototypes of a new munition that, he said, combined an explosive warhead with about 33 pounds of chlorine gas. The new munition had the advantage of killing enemy forces ei