The leader of a militia that carried out a series of atrocities and war crimes in the Sudanese region of Darfur has been convicted by the International Criminal Court.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, was found guilty on 27 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including rape, murder, and persecution.
He is the first person convicted by the ICC over crimes in the Darfur conflict, since the court opened its investigations in 2005.
Presiding ICC Judge Joanna Korner, part of the three-person panel at The Hague, said Abd-al-Rahman “encouraged and gave instructions that resulted in the killings, the rapes and destruction committed by the Janjaweed”.
Abd-al-Rahman was a senior commander in the Janjaweed militia during the Darfur conflict, which erupted when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003.
Former Sudanese president Omar al Bashir’s government responded with a campaign of aerial bombings and raids carried out by the military, the police and the Janjaweed.
The group often attacked at dawn, sweeping into villages on horseback or camelback, and carried out mass killings and rapes, torture and persecution.
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The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 people were killed from February 2003 to August 2020 – when a peace agreement was officially signed – and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.
Al Bashir has been charged by the ICC with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, but has not been handed over to face justice in The Hague. He’s currently in military custody in Sudan, it is understood.
The three-judge ICC panel ruled that the atrocities were part of a government plan to violently snuff out a rebellion in the western region of Sudan.
Abd-al-Rahman faces a maximum life sentence and will be sentenced at a later date.
He previously pleaded innocent to 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity when his trial opened in April 2022, arguing he was not the person known as Ali Kushayb.
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‘Maybe there are some that you have missed’
The judges rejected that defence, and declined to deliver verdicts on four charges as they considered the crimes covered by other charges.
During the trial, judges heard from 56 witnesses who described horrific violence and the use of rape as a weapon to terrorise and humiliate women.
One witness told the court that during one massacre, Abd-al-Rahman was said to have told fighters: “Repeat, repeat for these people. Maybe there are some that you have missed.”
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Abd-al-Rahman’s defence lawyers called 17 witnesses and argued he was not a militia leader but “a no one” who had no involvement in the Darfur conflict.
At least 40,000 dead in Sudan civil war
It comes after the ICC’s deputy prosecutor told the United Nations in July that war crimes and crimes against humanity continue in the Darfur region, where the subsequent civil war has raged for more than two years.
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Fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces – born out of Janjaweed militias – erupted in 2023 after the two groups were meant to oversee a democratic transition following a 2019 uprising.
According to the World Health Organisation, at least 40,000 people have been killed in the current civil war, and as many as 12 million people have been displaced.
The World Food Program added that more than 24 million people are facing acute food insecurity in Sudan.
The RSF has been accused of genocide in Darfur and mass looting, sexual violence and armed raids across the country – which it denies – and videos of its fighters lynching women, lashing emergency responders and cheering over dead bodies have circulated online since April 2023.
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Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said after Abd-al-Rahman’s “long-awaited” conviction that it “provides the first opportunity for victims and communities terrorised by the Janjaweed to see a measure of justice before the court”.
“With the current conflict in Sudan producing new generations of victims and compounding the suffering of those targeted in the past,” she added, “the verdict should spur action by governments to advance justice by all possible means.”
