International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors on Monday urged judges to impose a life sentence on Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, the former Janjaweed militia commander convicted of leading brutal attacks in Sudan’s Darfur region. Prosecutor Julian Nicholls described Abd-Al-Rahman—widely known as Ali Kushayb—as a direct perpetrator of killings and a commander who ordered large-scale atrocities two decades ago.
“You have before you an individual who personally killed with an axe,” Nicholls told the sentencing panel, recounting evidence that the 76-year-old used the weapon to murder two civilians. He characterized Kushayb as a “willing and effective” agent of the violence that devastated multiple Darfur communities in the early 2000s.
Abd-Al-Rahman was found guilty in October of 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, pillage, rape, and persecution. His conviction marks the ICC’s first successful prosecution directly linked to the Darfur conflict, a milestone in a case referred to the court by the U.N. Security Council in 2005 after Sudanese courts failed to act.
The defence maintains Abd-Al-Rahman is a victim of mistaken identity and is not the Janjaweed commander known as Kushayb. Defence lawyers, who will deliver their full submissions later this week, have asked for a drastically reduced sentence—no more than seven years, including time already served, which would make him eligible for release within months.
Lawyers for victims strongly rejected that proposal on Monday, saying a short sentence would undermine accountability for systematic attacks that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people and left entire communities traumatised.
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when predominantly non-Arab rebels launched an insurgency against Sudan’s government, accusing it of neglecting the region. Khartoum responded by mobilising Arab militias—the Janjaweed—whose campaign of scorched-earth attacks prompted accusations of genocide by the United States and human rights organisations.
Although the initial conflict subsided, new waves of violence erupted in 2023 when fighting broke out between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group widely viewed as a successor to the Janjaweed. Renewed clashes in Darfur—especially around al-Fashir—have triggered ethnic killings and fresh mass displacement, underscoring the enduring legacy of the atrocities at the centre of Kushayb’s case.
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Source:Africa Publicity
