Feared Sudanese Warlord Found Guilty at The Hague for Crimes in Darfur

Europe|Feared Sudanese Warlord Is Convicted of War Crimes

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, a feared Sudanese militia leader, was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court on Monday, more than 20 years after he helped lead a brutal campaign of killing and destruction in Darfur.

Mr. Rahman, who is also known as Ali Kushayb, was one in a group of men accused by the court of carrying out a scorched-earth campaign that killed entire villages, including women and children, when the Sudanese government in Khartoum allied with local militias to stamp out a 2003 rebellion in Darfur.

Mr. Rahman was the first person to be tried at The Hague for atrocities in Darfur. Fearing for his life in Sudan, he surrendered to the court in 2020, but then denied all charges and claimed he was a victim of mistaken identity.

Joanna Korner, the presiding judge, said there was no doubt about who he was. Announcing the verdict, she described Mr. Rahman as a senior commander of the Janjaweed, the ruthless ethnic militia that did the army’s bidding in Darfur during that period, and became notorious for its raids and aerial bombings.

Citing harrowing accounts of mass killings and sexual violence carried out by Mr. Rahman’s forces, she said that not only did he give orders, but he was “personally involved” in beatings and gave direct orders for executions.

Human rights groups welcomed the verdict as a long-overdue step toward accountability for a period of dire abuses. It “should serve as a significant milestone in the pursuit of justice for crimes committed in Darfur more than two decades ago,” Tigere Chagutah, regional director of Amnesty International for eastern and southern Africa, said in a statement.

An estimated 300,000 people were killed in Darfur and some 3 million were driven from their homes.

But the verdict also underscored the court’s failure to bring to justice to other, more senior figures who stand accused of even more serious crimes.

The crackdown in Darfur was led by the government of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president at the time, who was indicted by the court in 2009 and 2010 on charges that included genocide and crimes against humanity.

After Mr. al-Bashir was deposed in a coup in 2019, the new Sudanese government said the former president and others would be tried at The Hague for the genocide, but they have not been handed over.

Since 2023, a devastating civil war has been tearing the country apart. Millions of Sudanese are living in famine. Humanitarian assistance is scarce. As many as 400,000 people may have died, according to the former U.S. envoy Tom Perriello.

And the focus of the war is, once again, in Darfur, where a paramilitary group descended from the Janjaweed, known as the Rapid Support Forces, is laying brutal siege to the city of El Fasher in North Darfur state.

Mr. al-Bashir, now 81, and other senior figures wanted for the crimes of two decades ago remain at large, living under the protection of Sudan’s military, according to local news reports. They include Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, the former interior and defense minister, and Ahmed Haroun, a chief of security.

The international court has also issued a warrant for Abdulla Banda, commander in chief of the Justice and Equality Movement, an armed group in Darfur that fought against Sudan’s military in the 2000s, but is allied with it in the current conflict.

The judges said Mr. Rahman would be sentenced at a later date.

Declan Walsh contributed from Nairobi, Kenya.