The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has sentenced Sudanese militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman to twenty years in prison. The Court announced this via a message on X.
Abd-Al-Rahman, better known as Ali Kushayb, had already been found guilty in October of 31 war crimes and crimes against humanity committed at the turn of the century in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. These included mass killings, rapes and forced deportations during a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions.
The crimes for which he has now been definitively convicted date from 2003 and 2004. Kushayb was one of the leaders of the now disbanded Janjaweed militia (the predecessor of the RSF). He was known as a close ally of dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was deposed in 2019 and later captured. Bashir was never extradited to the ICC. Abd-Al-Rahman has been in detention in The Hague since 2020.
The ICC can only judge the crimes committed in Darfur at the time. The UN Security Council has never extended the Court’s mandate to other parts of Sudan, leaving it without authority to prosecute the current widespread violence in the country.
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Conviction in Darfur case highlights what Sudan still lacks: justice in the present
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