Washington and Paris have admitted that their diplomats destroyed the passports of Sudanese citizens who had applied for visas, trapping them in the war-torn country.

France and the US say their diplomats were simply following protocol to avoid sensitive documents falling into the wrong hands but this has done nothing to assuage the outrage of Sudanese citizens now stranded in a war zone.

“I can hear the warplanes and the bombing from my window, I’m trapped here with no way out” Selma Ali, an engineer who submitted her passport to the US Embassy three days before the war erupted, told The New York Times, which first reported that the travel documents had been shredded.

When fighting erupted on April 15 between the rival forces of Sudan’s two top generals – army chief Abdel Fattah al Buran and paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo – foreign diplomats caught in the crossfire rushed to flee Khartoum.

Such was the rush to evacuate embassies that many – including the British – left behind passports that had been submitted for visa applications. No government has said publicly how many documents were abandoned or destroyed. 

“We recognise that this is an extremely difficult situation. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and the UK Government is working to identify solutions for those affected,” an FCDO spokesperson said last month.

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

“Because the security environment did not allow us to safely return those passports, we followed our procedure to destroy them rather than leave them behind unsecured.”

The US previously faced criticism after acknowledging destroying Afghan passports left at the American embassy in Kabul as the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. In that case Afghan citizens were able to apply for new passports from the new Taliban government.

In Sudan the office that issues new passports is closed due to fighting in the capital.  By Campbell MacDiarmid, The Telegraph

In a surprising admission, Tony Mwaba Kazadi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Minister of Primary, Secondary and Technical Education, acknowledged having an unplanned pregnancy with Aminata Namasia.

Yet he said it was an accident at work.

In spite of the fact that they were both married, Namasia is claimed to have fallen in love with Kazadi after being appointed as the National Deputy Minister of Primary, Secondary, and Technical Education in Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde’s cabinet on April 12, 2021.

Namasia, however, was cited by a local newspaper, The Street Journal, as having refuted the story on her Twitter page, claiming that outside of her official and public duties, she has a life that must be respected by all; a right, she claimed, that is guaranteed to all Congolese by their constitution.

She argued that damaging her reputation shouldn’t be a practice that was condoned because it could jeopardise not only her relationships but also the reputations of her married male coworkers and their houses.

She said: “On the eve of the electoral contests scheduled for December of this year, political detractors can attack my opinions and political actions rather than opting for practices tending to smear my person.”

The tale was debunked by “a reliable Congolese” named Nugandu, who was quoted in The Street Journal, and claimed that it was all a part of the DRC’s political theatre.