Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman: Sudanese militia chief convicted of warfare crimes in Darfur | EUROtoday

The International Criminal Court has convicted a militia chief of crimes in opposition to humanity for atrocities dedicated within the battle in Sudan’s Darfur.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman was discovered responsible of 27 counts of crimes in opposition to humanity and warfare crimes, together with rape, homicide and persecution.

He will likely be sentenced at a later date after a brand new spherical of hearings.

This is the primary and solely trial to this point crimes in Sudan because the case was referred to the court docket by the United Nations Security Council in 2005.

Darfur’s battle erupted in 2003, when principally non-Arab rebels took up arms in opposition to Sudan’s authorities, accusing it of marginalising the distant western territory.

Sudan’s then-government mobilised principally Arab militias, often called the Janjaweed, to crush the revolt.

That unleashed a wave of violence that the United States and human rights teams stated amounted to genocide.

Abd-Al-Rahman ordered non-Arab tribes to be worn out

Presiding choose Joanna Korner stated the trial chamber unanimously discovered Abd-Al-Rahman responsible of all of the crimes he had been charged with, dismissing his defence that he was the sufferer of mistaken id.

“He encouraged and gave instructions that resulted in the killings, the rapes and destruction committed by the Janjaweed,” she stated.

Ms Korner added that he gave orders to “wipe out and sweep away” non-Arab tribes and instructed troopers “don’t leave anyone behind. Bring no one alive”.

Victims of the Darfur battle stated the milestone judgment had restored some religion within the ICC and its gradual procedures.

“As victims, the ruling is a victory for us and for justice, because the crimes he committed had huge impacts for the last 22 years. We were displaced, made refugees in camps,” stated Jamal Abdallah, 32, who was displaced from his residence in West Darfur as a toddler by the Janjaweed in 2003.

Court nonetheless searching for former Sudanese president

There are nonetheless excellent arrest warrants in opposition to Sudanese officers, together with one accusing former President Omar al-Bashir of genocide expenses.

According to Sudanese military sources, Mr Bashir and former defence minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein are in army custody in northern Sudan.

While sources stated one other ICC fugitive, inside minister Ahmed Haroun, was at massive after escaping jail on the outbreak of warfare, Reuters met him in northern Sudan in April of this yr. At the time, he dismissed the ICC as a colonialist establishment.

Since the beginning of the ICC trial three years in the past, battle has erupted once more in Sudan.

The new preventing that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has unleashed waves of ethnically pushed killings, precipitated mass displacement and created what the UN has referred to as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.