Sudanese Citizens Stranded Due to Suspend Passports Inside European Embassies

Rami Badawi, 29, told the BBC that he was stranded in Khartoum because the French embassy refused to return his passport. Badawi works in the offices of a French technology company in Sudan. His passport was in the embassy because he was applying for a visa for a business trip to France.

He added, “I want to leave, but I can’t.”

Badawi contacted the French Embassy after the fighting broke out, asking if he could come to collect his passport. But he says they haven’t responded to emails.

The French embassy did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

“They started the evacuation process and left without contact,” Badawi said.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday evening, he added that he was angry and scared, and said: “I can hear the sound of weapons from morning until night.”

Badawi indicated that his mother, father and brothers had their passports and planned to travel by bus to Egypt. However, faced with the agonizing decision of leaving without him, the whole family eventually decided to stay in Khartoum rather than leave him there alone.

The main ways out of Sudan at present are to take a bus to the northern border and cross into Egypt, or travel to the port city of Port Sudan and take a boat across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Thousands of people have also fled to neighboring Chad, which is struggling to provide people with food, water or housing.

Muhammad al-Fadil, 30, told the BBC that he had been planning a holiday in Spain and was waiting for his visa when the war broke out.

He added that when he called the emergency number of the Spanish Embassy in Khartoum to request the return of his passport, “the woman asked me, who answered: Are you Sudanese or Spanish?” “When I told her I was Sudanese, she immediately hung up,” he says.

El Fadil left Khartoum and reached northern Sudan, but says he will be separated from his family, who plan to cross the border into Egypt without him. “I am the only one in my family who cannot travel,” he said.

He adds, “We are praying for the opening of the passport office, but the main passport office is located in Khartoum and is not working because of the war.”

“I haven’t received any response or anything from the Spanish embassy. My passport is very valuable, and I need it to escape this war. What hurts me the most is that I didn’t get any response.”

Another man, who asked not to be named, said he felt “less human” after Spanish diplomats evacuated themselves and their compatriots without responding to his requests to return his passport.

He told the BBC that he managed to cross the border into Ethiopia using an old passport that expired two years ago, but that it was just luck.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry told the BBC: “The embassy has been closed to the public and since the evacuation, there is no longer access to it, among other reasons due to the huge security risks.”

She indicated that warnings in this regard had been posted on social media.

“People who left their passports there (at the embassy) have been urged to obtain another travel document from the Sudanese authorities,” she added.

Sweden’s embassy in Khartoum has also been accused of failing to return the passports of people who applied for visas before evacuating its staff.

Ahmed Mahmoud, a 35-year-old film director who now lives in Port Sudan, after he fled Khartoum two days ago, told the BBC that he had applied for a visa to participate in a Swedish film festival.

He added, “When the war started, the embassy staff left without any regard for my passport.” He said that on the day the fighting started, he called the embassy and said he no longer wanted the visa, and asked for his passport back.

He pointed out that they told him, “They will look into the matter. I used to call them every day, and then at the end of the week the Swedish embassy was evacuated. I was told that there is no way you can get your passport.”

Mahmoud said he feared for his safety: “If this war continues, I will have to leave immediately. It will be very bad for people like me, for civil society and artists, and it will be like what President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did in Egypt.”

He added that his wife’s passport was with her, “so if she wants to leave, I can’t go with her.”

Once he gets a new passport, Mahmoud says, he will travel to Kenya, Uganda or Ethiopia, because he can get a visa when he arrives at the border or airport.

The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “Embassy staff have been evacuated and the embassy will continue its operations from Stockholm. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot comment in detail on the security measures taken by the embassy before moving its operations because that would negate the usefulness of these measures.”