Sudan: Tarek Madani and Sudan’s chemical weapons program: Evidence, responsibility, and consequences”
The involvement of Tarek Madani in the chemical weapons file clearly reveals Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s cooperation with the Islamist terrorist movement and the perpetration of this war crime.
The Washington Post has published an investigative report based on a collection of internal documents, videos, text messages, and photographs obtained by the newspaper from security sources in the Middle East, who claim to have received them from inside Sudan.
The file documents a secret program for manufacturing chemical munitions, sites for assembling warheads within military facilities, tests conducted in remote desert areas, and the diversion of a portion of chlorine supplies originally intended for sterilizing drinking water toward a militarily prohibited use.
An element of the Islamist terrorist movement within the army
To clarify the picture and identify the main officials responsible for this file both in planning and execution the documented information points to Brigadier Tarek Hussein Mohammed Madani, born on May 15, 1971.
He is originally from the village of Al-Qurair, in the Merowe locality of the Northern State, about 20 kilometers from the Merowe Dam, where his family resides in the Al-Qala’a neighborhood, specifically in the Al-Obeidab faction.
Madani was recruited into the organization of the Islamist movement while still in high school in 1990. In 1993, the Islamist movement facilitated his entry into the Military Academy as part of the 43rd intake.
He graduated with the rank of second lieutenant in 1995 and was then assigned to the Ordnance and Munitions Corps.
At this early stage, Madani was described as an officer below the ordinary standard, with very limited capabilities. He had graduated from the Military Academy at the bottom of his class.
A turning point
The turning point in his career came in 2002, when he was recommended by his classmate, Colonel Al-Tahir Al-Faki Al-Tahir Al-Badiri ; an officer and Islamist figure within the armed forces, working at the presidency of military industrialization to be transferred to the Military Industrialization Authority (later renamed the Defense Industries System – DIS), with the rank of captain. He began there as an administrative officer, relying on the limited experience in munitions he had acquired during his previous service in the Ordnance and Munitions Corps.
He was later transferred to the Security and Defense Systems Development Authority, under the command of General Omar Zein al-Abidine, considered one of the most prominent Islamist figures who oversaw the recruitment of Islamist officers into the Sudanese army since 1989.
The chemical program
This modest beginning stands in stark contrast to the role Tarek Madani would later play. According to the security sources who provided The Washington Post with the investigation documents, he became the main coordinator of the Sudanese chemical weapons program and the general manager of Target Multi-Activities Company Ltd (TMAC).
TMAC is controlled by the Defense Industries System (DIS) the institution with exclusive responsibility for military industries in Sudan. It operates as a subsidiary of DIS through the Giad Group, a military-industrial-civil conglomerate belonging to the same structure, as revealed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury when it imposed sanctions on Madani and his company in June 2026.
Target Multi-Activities Company served as an import channel for explosives and related materials from companies in Egypt and India.
The most notable of these was the Indian company SBL Energy Limited, which supplied it with more than 200 shipments of explosives since 2024. Some of these shipments were later used in bombs dropped by the Sudanese armed forces.
Involvement in chlorine imports
Tarek Madani’s name appears repeatedly in the file materials. These include photographs of bomb assembly, discussions about the specifications of chemical warheads, messages and audio clips discussing the production of hundreds of chlorine bombs and their storage at the Merowe base, as well as correspondence about the program with Sudanese officials including army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
According to The Washington Post, when the newspaper contacted the phone number associated with these messages, the person who answered acknowledged that his name was Tarek.
However, he denied any knowledge of or involvement in the production of chemical weapons, claiming it was a military matter that did not concern him.
The documents also reveal a document dated July 2025, bearing the signature of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan himself, concerning the formation of a Sudanese committee to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use. This document requires Madani himself to be included among the committee’s members “due to his expertise.”
There is no doubt that including the very person accused of managing the program within the investigative committee on that same program casts serious doubt on the committee’s independence.
The trajectory of Tarek Madani from an officer with administrative duties and limited experience, to a central figure in correspondence with the army chief about chemical munitions, placed on U.S. sanctions lists, and subsequently appointed to the committee investigating the very accusations against him raises a critical question: what is the nature of the patronage that allowed an officer of such modest standing to be entrusted with a file of this gravity within the Sudanese military institution? And what is the role of the Islamist movement organization to which he belongs in this international crime?
