Nairobi in The Crosshairs: US Sanctions File Exposes RFS Arms Chief Operating Under Kenyan Passport

A routine update to the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions register has detonated a diplomatic grenade beneath Nairobi, revealing that Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa, the youngest brother of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, has been operating with a Kenyan passport.

The document, numbered AK1586127, appears alongside Sudanese travel papers and an Emirati identification number in a memo quietly published by the Treasury on February 19, 2026.

The disclosure transforms what Nairobi has long framed as principled, even-handed mediation in Sudan’s catastrophic civil war into something far more uncomfortable: a capital city whose passports are being used by a man Washington has formally designated as the chief logistics architect of a genocide.

The Man Behind the Weapons

Algoney is not merely a famous brother. He is, by Washington’s own accounting, the operational engine of the RSF’s war machine. As the militia’s procurement director, he has been the critical node connecting battlefield demand to international supply.

Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa

According to the US Treasury, he controlled RSF front companies including the OFAC-sanctioned Tradive General Trading, which imported vehicles to Sudan on behalf of the RSF. Those vehicles were retrofitted with machine guns before being deployed against civilian populations across Darfur.

Washington sanctioned him in October 2024 for “leading efforts to supply weapons to continue the war in Sudan,” describing how his actions directly fuelled the RSF’s siege of El Fasher, a city of nearly two million people in North Darfur.

The European Union followed suit on January 29, 2026, placing him on its own designations list. The updated Treasury memo, published alongside fresh sanctions against three RSF commanders over documented atrocities in El Fasher, now adds a Kenyan passport to his known identity portfolio, a detail that turns a bilateral diplomatic embarrassment into a question of international complicity.

Algoney also maintained access to an AZ Gold bank account in the UAE holding millions of dollars, according to the US Treasury, underscoring the scale of the financial architecture he commanded from his base in Dubai, from where he extended the RSF’s reach across borders and balance sheets.

What a Passport Means in a Sanctions Era

In contemporary conflict, the logistics commander is as decisive as the general. Territory is seized by fighters but sustained by access to finance, supply chains and international mobility.

A sanctioned individual operating under a legitimate third-country passport is not merely a bureaucratic anomaly. It is a mechanism of evasion. Passports enable sanctioned actors to move money, secure residence, open accounts and build rear bases far from the front line.

That Kenya’s government document appears in a US Treasury sanctions file is damning not only because of what it reveals about Algoney’s movements, but because of what it implies about how that passport was obtained.

Kenyan citizenship documents are not handed out casually. The existence of passport AK1586127 in the name of a man simultaneously holding Sudanese travel papers and Emirati residency, while directing arms flows into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, raises questions that Nairobi’s foreign ministry will find extremely difficult to answer.

A Pattern, Not an Incident

The revelation does not emerge from a vacuum. It lands on top of a mountain of accumulated evidence pointing to Kenya’s systematic proximity to the Dagalo family and the RSF’s broader political project.

In January 2024, President William Ruto hosted Hemedti himself in Nairobi as part of a regional tour that drew formal protest from Sudan’s internationally recognised government.

President Ruto holds talks with RSF leader general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in State House, Nairobi

Talk of a close personal relationship between Ruto and Hemedti intensified further when Ruto travelled to Juba, South Sudan, on his presidential jet accompanied by Abdulrahim Dagalo, the RSF’s deputy commander and another sanctioned brother of Hemedti.

Then, in February 2025, RSF leaders convened in Nairobi, where they signed a charter for the formation of a parallel government in Sudan, a move that prompted Khartoum to recall its ambassador and ban Kenyan tea imports. Sudan’s foreign ministry was explicit in its accusation, stating that Ruto had placed personal and commercial interests with the militia’s regional sponsors above bilateral relations.

Those accusations of commercial entanglement carry particular weight. Kenya’s former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua publicly claimed that Ruto was involved in the gold trade run by Hemedti, describing how gold extracted from territories under RSF control was brought to Nairobi and then moved to Dubai.

The claim, made on Kenya’s KTN News, has never been substantively refuted by State House.

The UAE Thread

Running through every dimension of this story is the United Arab Emirates. Kenya concluded a comprehensive economic agreement with the UAE, the RSF’s primary external sponsor, in January 2024, with Abu Dhabi committing to double investments in Kenya.

Nairobi was simultaneously awaiting a 1.5 billion dollar UAE loan to cover budget deficits.

A January 2024 report by a UN independent panel of experts on Darfur explicitly documented the UAE’s role, detailing its provision of military hardware, financial aid, and logistical backing to the RSF. The UAE denies arming the RSF.

Yet Algoney, the man coordinating that hardware supply, is a Dubai-based businessman operating under a Kenyan passport with an Emirati ID.

The geometry of this arrangement, Kenyan diplomatic cover, Emirati financing, RSF operational control, now has a document number attached to it: AK1586127.

Senators, Waldorf Astoria and a Visit to Washington

The complications extend even beyond East Africa. In October 2025, Algoney travelled to Washington DC to represent the RSF at the so-called Quad talks, composed of the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, aimed at advancing peace in Sudan.

He reportedly remained in Washington after those talks concluded, staying at the Waldorf Astoria, even as RSF forces were systematically massacring civilians in Sudan.

US Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Cory Booker subsequently wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanding an investigation into Algoney’s stay.

Their letter questioned whether US persons, including hotels, transportation services and financial institutions, had engaged in prohibited dealings with a sanctioned individual.

The question of which travel document Algoney used in Washington has not been publicly answered. The revelation that he holds a Kenyan passport alongside Sudanese documents gives that question new urgency.

The Mediation Illusion

Kenya has consistently maintained that its engagement with RSF leadership constitutes mediation rather than alignment.

Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi described the hosting of RSF political events as “compatible with Kenya’s role in peace negotiation.” The argument has worn progressively thinner with each revelation.

Kenya was removed as lead mediator in the Sudan conflict by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in December 2023, following Sudan’s objections over Ruto’s perceived bias.

Its candidate for the African Union Commission chairmanship, Raila Odinga, was defeated in early 2025 by Djibouti, a country whose economy is a fraction of Kenya’s, in what analysts widely attributed in part to Nairobi’s regional conduct.

The country that once hosted liberation movements and helped negotiate the peace agreement that created South Sudan now finds its travel documents listed in a US Treasury designation for a man accused of supplying weapons to a force the United Nations this week described as displaying the hallmarks of genocide in Darfur.

As Sudan’s war grinds on, leaving millions displaced and thousands dead, even the smallest bureaucratic artefact can cast a long diplomatic shadow. Passport number AK1586127 is no small artefact. It is a paper trail that leads directly to Nairobi.

Kenya’s government had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.