Prosecutors sought a life sentence for a Janjaweed militia leader convicted of atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, telling the International Criminal Court on Monday he was guilty of murder and ordering others to commit mass crimes.
“You literally have an axe murderer before you,” prosecutor Julian Nicholls told a special hearing called to determine a sentence for Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman – also known as Ali Kushayb.
Nicholls said Kushayb, 76, had at one point used an axe to kill two people, and described him as an enthusiastic, energetic and effective perpetrator of the abuses carried out in the Darfur region more than 20 years ago, according to Reuters.
His conviction in October on 27 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and the orchestration of rape and other atrocities by the militia, is the court’s first successful prosecution linked to the conflict.
Lawyers for the defendant – who had argued that he was not Kushayb and was the innocent victim of mistaken identity- are due to present their views on his sentencing later this week.
In court documents, the defense has called for a maximum of seven years in prison with credit for time served, which could see him freed in months.
Lawyers representing victims told judges on Monday a seven-year sentence was too low considering the severity of the crimes and Kushayb’s leading role in them.
Darfur’s conflict first erupted in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Sudan’s government, accusing it of marginalizing the remote western territory.
Sudan’s then government mobilized mostly Arab factions, known as the Janjaweed, to crush the revolt, unleashing a wave of violence that the US and human rights groups said amounted to genocide.
In 2005, the United Nations Security Council referred the case to the ICC, a Hague-based court set up to try the worst crimes when local courts fail.
Fresh clashes erupted in Darfur and across Sudan in 2023 between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), seen as successors to the Janjaweed.
Fighting in Darfur, particularly its city of al-Fasher, has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven killings, caused mass displacement.