From warlords to shadowy figures, how rogue officials dish out passports to crooks

Details have emerged of how rogue immigration officials, allegedly acting on instructions from senior government figures, aided one of Sudan’s most wanted warlords, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa alias Hemedti, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — the younger brother of Rapid Support Forces commander Hemedti — as well as several of his allies and family members, to acquire Kenyan passports, with others reportedly in the pipeline.

So covert was the operation that some of the aliens filed application forms using details of minors as a smokescreen to derail prying eyes. Only their photos, attached at the bottom of the forms, with moustaches and adult physical features, give their ploy away.

Investigations by The Standard have established how the government deployed an intricate web of underhand dealings involving powerful individuals within the security system, operatives from the Rapid Support Forces and the Department of Immigration, who colluded to process the passports.

In the discreet exercise, immigration officials bypassed established protocols and guidelines to hawk the Kenyan passport to several aliens of Sudanese origin, a South Sudanese national and an Ethiopian citizen. However, the bulk of approvals was done for Sudanese nationals linked to the RSF.

Controversial Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo is also said to have applied and his application is still being processed.

Consequently, some of the names whose profiles have been flagged globally over their involvement in grave human rights violations in the ongoing civil war in Sudan received an umbrella of deceptive protection by acquiring citizenship and becoming holders of Kenyan passports.

The Standard got rare access to some of the documents that were used to legitimise more than 20 Sudanese nationals as Kenyan passport holders through naturalisation. The details include application forms that were uploaded into the application system and scanned signatures.

However, unlike other applicants who have to present themselves to immigration offices to have their photos and biometrics taken and documents verified, the aliens did not go to the offices. Instead, they sent their pictures to an immigration official to process their documents.

The applicants also sent scanned pictures of their signatures to their links at the immigration office in Nairobi, who later processed them and included them in their forms.

In the application forms, however, they indicated a number that belongs to Safaricom and appears in several forms that The Standard was able to access.

Yesterday, however, moments after details emerged of the rot that saw a crucial government document handed over to aliens without breaking a sweat, sources within immigration confirmed to The Standard that Dagalo’s passport had been deleted from the immigration database.

His footprints, however, appear in one of the application forms listed for a minor identified as his child.

However, a document seen confidentially by The Standard indicates that he had listed +254722000000 as his number in a form he had used to apply for one of his children. The number is the official number of the telecommunications giant Safaricom. His physical address also indicates that he is a resident of Dubai.

In another application form seen by The Standard, details indicate that the applicant was a minor born on June 6, 2020. However, a scroll through the file indicates that the photo attached belongs to an adult.

The picture of the adult is that of Mohamed Elmokhtar Elnour Haron Eldawi, a Sudanese national born in 1978 in Elganana. His expired Sudanese passport is among those that formed part of the database in the applications.

According to our source, details of children were used as a decoy in some of the applications, which was common and was part of an effort to derail any external investigators. This was then altered by immigration officials who generated the passports with the names provided by their handlers.

According to the documents, the application for passports for aliens was done on different dates between March 25, 2023 and February 25 last year.

In the application forms, eight of the applicants indicated their place of birth as Nyala North in Sudan, while two were born in Khartoum. Among the Kenyan passports issued, 14 were processed on Valentine’s Day in 2025, a perfect gift for the aliens who are reportedly using the passports to evade the hawk eyes of other countries that have slapped some with sanctions.

However, two minors who were born in 2018 and 2020 are yet to be allocated passports, although their documentation has been filed in the official database.

In the status update of the application, accessible in the backend of the system, approval details indicate the approval was done through the authority of the PS.

The developments cast a shadow over the rot at the immigration office and the country’s systems that have allowed individuals who have been flagged by other countries to attain Kenyan citizenship.

During the investigations, The Standard established that a powerful businessman who is not a Kenyan citizen had already been listed as a citizen and had applied for a Kenyan passport. Others who have obtained Kenyan passports were Abdelrahim Hamdan Daglu Mousa, a senior operative of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In his application, he had also listed the official Safaricom number as his number.

Since April 2023, fighting between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has plunged Sudan into a severe humanitarian crisis.

The Standard established that Dagalo used the passport to visit the US in October last year. However, details of his travel history have been deleted from the immigration website.

Last year, President William Ruto faced both local and international backlash for hosting leaders of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Nairobi as critics pointed an accusing finger at his administration for providing not just political support but also a logistical platform to operate at will.

Sudan’s government condemned the meetings, recalling its ambassador in protest and accusing Kenya of interference in its internal affairs. At the same time, Sudan banned Kenyan tea, leading to massive revenue losses running into billions of shillings and severely impacting Kenyan farmers and traders.

Some political voices in Kenya went further, alleging potential personal or commercial ties between Ruto and RSF leaders, including murky claims around gold trade networks linked to RSF financing.

Ruto and his administration have consistently rejected these allegations, insisting that the meetings were aimed at facilitating dialogue and peace, not endorsing a paramilitary group, and that Kenya’s role was strictly diplomatic.

The disturbing details yet again shine the international spotlight on Nairobi as possibly harbouring links to one of Sudan’s most notorious military networks, raising questions about how Kenyan identity documents could be used, intentionally or inadvertently, to facilitate international conflict.

The global scrutiny now threatens to expose the country to secondary sanctions if Dagalo’s networks are properly traced to the heart of Kenyan systems.