ICC sentences Rahman, “axeman” at the head of the Sudanese militia, to 20 years in prison | News on crimes against humanity

This conviction, linked to actions committed in 2003 and 2004, was the ICC’s first regarding crimes committed in Darfur. The region is now suffering even more because of the war.

The International Criminal Court has sentenced a former Janjaweed militia leader to 20 years in prison for committing atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, 76, also known as Ali Kushayb, was sentenced Tuesday following his conviction in October for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is the first time the ICC has convicted a suspect for crimes in Darfur, a region that is once again the scene of mass atrocities amid a brutal civil war between the government-linked Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose origins trace back to the Janjaweed militia.

The court unanimously convicted Kushayb on 31 counts, including attacks on civilians, murder, torture, rape, pillage, destruction of property, persecution and forcible population transfer between 2003 and 2004.

“Extermination, humiliation and displacement”

Abd-Al-Rahman was a leading member of Sudan’s infamous Janjaweed militia who “actively” participated in multiple war crimes during the civil war, the court found.

Judge Joanna Korner, who handed down the sentence, said he “personally carried out” the beatings, including with an axe, and issued execution orders.

She cited victims who said he carried out a “campaign of extermination, humiliation and displacement.”

Abd-Al-Rahman had always denied during his trial that he was a senior member of the Janjaweed militia, a predominantly Arab paramilitary force armed by the Sudanese government to kill mainly black African tribes in Darfur.

He insisted at the start of his trial in April 2022 that he was “not Ali Kushayb” and that the court had got the wrong man – an argument rejected by the judges.

Prosecutors had requested a life sentence, noting that among his crimes, Abd-Al-Rahman killed two people with an ax.

“You literally have an ax murderer in front of you. It’s the stuff of nightmares,” prosecutor Julian Nicholls said at a pre-sentencing hearing.

Defense lawyers had requested a seven-year prison sentence.

The court noted that the time Abd al-Rahman spent in detention – from the date of his surrender on June 9, 2020 until the date of the judgment – ​​will be deducted from his sentence.

‘Desperate’

Fighting broke out in the Darfur region in the 2000s, when non-Arab tribes, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against the Arab-majority government.

Khartoum responded by releasing the Janjaweed, a force now known as the Popular Defense Forces and drawn from the region’s nomadic tribes.

The United Nations says 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others displaced in the conflict.

Abd-Al-Rahman had fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020, when a new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC investigation.

He said he then turned himself in because he was “desperate” and feared authorities would kill him.

The Darfur region has suffered further since a civil war broke out between the military government and RSF in April 2023.

Both sides are accused of committing atrocities – but primarily the RSF – and millions of people have been displaced and face starvation, creating an urgent humanitarian crisis.

The RSF took full control of Darfur in November, from where they are now trying to advance east to central Sudan.