ICC declares first conviction related to Sudan’s Darfur genocide

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has declared its first conviction of a suspect linked to atrocities committed in the 2003 Darfur genocide, according to Asharq Al-Aswat on October 7^th.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, more commonly known by his nom de guerre Ali Kushayb, was convicted on October 6^th of ordering and participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

The atrocities were committed from August 2003 to March 2004 and included rape, murder, torture, and forcible transfer, according to Al Jazeera on October 6^th.

In total, Kushayb was found guilty of 27 of the 31 crimes he was charged with. The ICC presiding judge, Joanna Korner, announced that “the chamber is convinced that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes with which he has been charged. She added that “its verdicts are unanimous.”

Kushayb showed zero emotion as the guilty verdicts were read out by the judge. Korner also revealed that he is eligible for the maximum sentence of life in prison and that his sentencing would take place at a later date.

Kushayb was a commander in the Janjaweed, a paramilitary group mostly composed of Arab nomadic tribes from Darfur. The name Janjaweed literally translates into ‘Devils on Horseback.’

In 2003, Sudan’s then-dictator Omar Al-Bashir unleashed them upon Darfur with a mandate to crush a civilian-led insurrection. The uprising was led by ethnic African tribes seeking to put an end to systematic racial oppression and centralised power by the Arab Sudanese elite in Khartoum.

In the ensuing conflict, the government deployed scorched-earth tactics, raids, and aerial bombing campaigns that killed up to 300,000 people and displaced another 2.7 million.

The Janjaweed contributed to much of the violence, going from village to village on horseback, inflicting atrocities on the inhabitants on behalf of the government. Al-Bashir himself was charged with an array of crimes by the ICC, including genocide. However, he has not yet been handed over to the court.

During Kushayb’s conviction, Korner went into gruesome detail about Kushayb’s morbid enthusiasm for violence against Darfur’s non-Arab tribes. According to The Guardian on October 6^th, she said that during one raid, he loaded around 50 civilians onto trucks whilst beating them with axes. He then forced them to lie on the ground and ordered his troops to shoot them.

She elaborated: “The accused was not only giving orders … but was personally involved in the beatings and later was physically present and giving orders for the execution of those detained.”

Speaking to the BBC on October 6^th, a small group of Darfuris waiting outside the court were under no illusion regarding Kushayb’s central role in causing their immense past suffering.

One man said that “he was the one who gave the orders. He was the one who got the weapons.” He continued: “If you ask me if he was important in Darfur, I will tell you he was one of the most important ones.”

The Darfur conflict lasted from 2003 to 2020 and generated one of the world’s most catastrophic humanitarian disasters. Al-Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, was deposed by his own military in 2019.

The power vacuum left by Al-Bashir’s ousting and a prompt failure to establish a civilian-led government plunged Sudan straight back into the jaws of terror. In April 2023, a power struggle between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces – the offspring of the Janjaweed – erupted into another civil war.

As it is now a key battleground, Darfur has once again transformed into the central stage upon which mass atrocities are frequently being committed. In June, the UN warned that the RSF’s ethnically motivated attacks against civilian minority groups may amount to acts of genocide. It is clear that Sudan is once again facing the same crimes that defined its darkest period.

Asharq Al-Aswat, Al Jazeera, Maghrebi.org, The Guardian, BBC