ICC sentences Sudan militia-leading ‘axeman’ Rahman to 20 years

The conviction, related to actions in 2003 and 2004, was the ICC’s first regarding crimes committed in Darfur. The region is now suffering further due to war.

The International Criminal Court has sentenced a former leader of the Janjaweed militia 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 on Tuesday following his conviction in October for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is the first time the ICC has convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur, a region that is once again seeing mass atrocities amid a vicious civil war, between the government-linked Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which traces its origins back to the Janjaweed militia.

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

‘Extermination, humiliation and displacement’

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

Judge Joanna Korner who passed the sentence said he had “personally perpetrated” beatings, including with an axe, and given orders for executions.

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

Abd-Al-Rahman had consistently denied during his trial being a high-ranking official in the Janjaweed militia, a largely Arab paramilitary force armed by the Sudanese government to kill mainly Black African tribes in Darfur.

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

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

“You literally have an axe murderer before you. This is the stuff of nightmares,” prosecutor Julian Nicholls said at a pre-sentencing hearing.

Defence lawyers had asked for a seven-year jail term.

The court noted that the time Abd al-Rahman has 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-dominated government.

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

The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million more were 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’s investigation.

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

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

Both sides are accused of committing atrocities – although mainly the RSF – and millions have been displaced and are at risk of famine, creating an urgent humanitarian crisis.

The RSF took full control of Darfur in November, from where it is now trying to push eastwards into central Sudan.