Sudan militia chief sentenced to 20 years for war crimes during Darfur conflict

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced a Sudanese militia leader to 20 years in prison for atrocities committed during a civil war more than two decades ago.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman had been convicted in October on 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur region.

Known as Ali Kushayb, he was one of the leaders of the Janjaweed, a government-backed group that terrorised Darfur, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Kushayb, aged 76, is the first person to be tried by the ICC for atrocities committed during the civil war. He had argued the charges were a case of mistaken identity.

Dressed in a light blue suit and tie, Kushayb stood quietly as presiding judge Joanna Korner delivered his sentence on Tuesday.

“Abdal Raman not only gave the orders which led directly to the crimes but… also personally perpetrated some of them,” Judge Korner told the court.

The conflict in question lasted from 2003 to 2020 and was one of the world’s gravest humanitarian disasters, with allegations of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the region’s non-Arabic population.

Five years after the end of that crisis, Darfur is a key battleground in another civil war, this time between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose origins lie in the Janjaweed.

During Kushayb’s trial, survivors described how their villages were burned down, men and boys slaughtered and women forced into sex slavery.

Judge Korner said Kushayb had given orders to “wipe out and sweep away” non-Arab tribes and told soldiers “don’t leave anyone behind. Bring no one alive.”

The charges against Kushayb centred on attacks committed between 2003 and 2004.

The Darfur war began after the Arab-dominated government at the time armed the Janjaweed, in an attempt to suppress an uprising by rebels from black African ethnic groups.

The Janjaweed systematically attacked non-Arab villagers accused of supporting the rebels, leading to accusations of genocide.

That same systematic violence is still happening in Darfur as part of Sudan’s current civil war.

Many of the Janjaweed fighters went on to join the RSF.

The UK, US and rights groups have accused the RSF of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities in Darfur since the conflict began in 2023. The RSF has denied the accusations.

When passing Kushayb’s sentence, Judge Korner said the ICC wanted to ensure both “retribution and deterrence”.

“Deterrence is particularly apposite in this case given the current state of affairs in Sudan,” she said.

Throughout the two conflicts, there has been a “long hiring out of militias, suppressing of rebellion, and sexual violence used as a tool of war”, Dr Matthew Benson-Strohmayer, Sudan Research Director at the London School of Economics, told the BBC.

“I think the way that the war is being fought in Darfur in particular is really a war of terror,” he told the BBC.

At the time of the verdict, Dr Benson-Strohmayer said he hoped the conviction would impact the current conflict, but “sincerely” doubted it will.

Most victims of the first Darfur crisis remain displaced, and although the ICC has managed to prosecute Kushayb, there are still outstanding arrest warrants against Sudanese officials, including one accusing former President Omar al-Bashir of genocide, which he denies.

Bashir is reportedly in military custody in north Sudan after he was ousted in a coup in 2019.