The Egyptian authorities have used EU-funded security forces in a campaign of mass arrests and forcible deportations against refugees from the Sudan war, according to a human rights group report.

Amnesty International found Egypt “forcibly returned an estimated 800 Sudanese detainees between January and March 2024, who were all denied the possibility to claim asylum”.

The organisation said a campaign of mass arrests in Cairo and neighbouring Giza, and in the southern city of Aswan, where police have “conducted mass stops and identity checks targeting black individuals, spreading fear within the refugee community, leaving many afraid to leave their homes”.

Amnesty documented 14 arrests of refugees from public hospitals in Aswan. People were held in makeshift detention facilities run by Egyptian border guards, a force that has received extensive EU funding.

Refugees, including at least 11 children and their mothers, were taken to filthy warehouses or stables at military sites before being “forced into buses and vans and driven to the Sudanese border”.

Almost 2 million people have fled from Sudan since the war began in Apirl 2023, according to the UN, as a power struggle within the military regime quickly spiralled into open warfare on the streets of the capital.

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia has since engulfed entire provinces. More than 9 million have had to leave their homes but are still inside the country

In West Darfur state, Human Rights Watch has documented attacks by the RSF and allied militias that killed and displaced thousands, which they say constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, alongside the ethnic cleansing of non-Arab populations in the area.

Edem Wosornu, of the UN’s humanitarian affairs office, told the UN Security council  in March: “Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.” She called the rising famine among refugees “truly the stuff of nightmares”.

About 500,000 Sudanese people are registered  as refugees in Egypt

Amnesty International said the arrests and deportations followed an Egyptian prime ministerial decree last August, demanding that foreign nationals regularise their status.

“Egypt’s border guard forces operating under the ministry of defence, as well as police operating under the ministry of interior, have carried out mass arbitrary arrests of Sudanese people, and held women, men and children in cruel and inhuman conditions pending their forced return to Sudan ” Amnesty said.

The UNHCR documented 3,000 people  deported to Sudan from Egypt in September 2023 alone.