First ICC trial for Darfur war crimes begins

The Hague: On Tuesday, an accused Janjaweed militia leader pleaded not guilty to hundreds of allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court’s first trial dealing with Sudan’s almost two-decade-old Darfur crisis.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman is charged with supervising thousands of pro-government Janjaweed warriors who committed persecution, murder, rape, and torture during the violence’s peak in 2003-2004.

“I am innocent of all of these charges,” the septuagenarian Abd-Al-Rahman told judges after the charges were read out at the start of his case.

Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, surrendered voluntarily to a court in The Hague in June 2020 after 13 years on the run. He has maintained his innocence.

The trial takes place against the backdrop of an increase in what humanitarian organizations describe as intercommunal violence in Darfur following the conclusion of the United Nations and African Union missions there.

The UN estimates that 1.6 million people remain internally displaced in Darfur decades after the brunt of the violence.

Darfur’s conflict began when a majority of non-Arab rebels took up weapons against the Sudanese government, which reacted with a counter-insurgency.

Khartoum suppressed the insurrection by mobilizing primarily Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, unleashing a wave of brutality that Washington and other campaigners claimed amounted to genocide.

The UN estimates that 300,000 people were murdered and over 2 million displaced.

Abd-Al-Rahman faces up to life in jail if convicted on 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During previous sessions, his attorney contended that the defendant was a victim of mistaken identity and was insufficiently educated to comprehend that the instructions he carried out may result in war crimes.

Sudan’s former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is charged with genocide and other atrocities in Darfur by the International Criminal Court, was overthrown in 2019 and remains imprisoned in Khartoum.

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