THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A former Sudanese defense force leader led a marketing campaign of homicide, rape and torture throughout Darfur, the World Legal Court docket heard on Tuesday, as the 1st trial for battle crimes within the area were given underway. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, an best friend of deposed Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir, faces 31 counts of battle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity for his function within the war virtually twenty years in the past.

His trial is the 1st ahead of the Hague-based ICC for crimes in Darfur, during which 300,000 folks had been killed and two and a part million fled their houses, consistent with UN figures. “You’ll listen proof that he (Abd-Al-Rahman) and his forces rampaged throughout other portions of Darfur,” the ICC’s leader prosecutor Karim Khan advised judges.

He “inflicted critical ache and struggling on ladies, kids and males within the villages that he left in his wake,” Khan mentioned. Abd-Al-Rahman, 72, a senior commander of the Janjaweed militia-a infamous armed team created by way of the Sudanese government-pleaded no longer in charge after the ancient trial opened.

“I reject some of these fees. I’m blameless of some of these fees,” Abd-Al-Rahman advised judges on the ICC, a courtroom arrange in 2002 to check out the sector’s worst crimes. Dressed in a dismal blue swimsuit, mild blue blouse and fiddling along with his maroon tie, Abd-Al-Rahman sat immobile because the 31 counts of battle crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity allegedly dedicated in 2003-04 had been being learn.

The lengthy fee sheet describes acts of homicide, rape, torture and pillaging. Preventing broke out in Darfur when black African rebels, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up fingers in opposition to Bashir’s Arab-dominated regime. Khartoum spoke back by way of unleashing the Janjaweed, a power drawn from some of the area’s nomadic tribes. Rights teams described it as a planned marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning focused on the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic teams.

In April 2007, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Abd-Al-Rahman, additionally recognized by way of the nom de guerre of Ali Kushayb. He fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020 when the brand new Sudanese authorities introduced its goal to cooperate with the ICC investigation. 4 months later, he surrendered voluntarily.

‘Feared recognition’

Prosecutors mentioned Abd-Al-Rahman, who carried the name of “colonel of colonels” within the Janjaweed, performed a central function in a chain of assaults on a minimum of 4 villages in West Darfur. He’s charged with each directing assaults, in addition to mobilising, recruiting, arming and supplying to Janjaweed defense force underneath his command.

Abd-Al-Rahman “took pleasure within the energy that he concept he exerted… and a unusual glee in his feared recognition,” Khan advised the judges. All the way through those assaults, a minimum of 100 villagers had been murdered, girls and women had been raped and the participants of the predominantly Fur ethnic team subjected to forcible switch and persecution.

After one assault in overdue February and early March 2002 on a village, 100 Fur males together with neighborhood leaders, medical doctors and lecturers had been taken to a police station within the the town of Mukjar, the place they had been interrogated and tortured. Fifty detainees had been pushed out into the nation-state, advised to lie face down and had been then achieved, prosecutors mentioned.

In any other incident in March 2004, between 100 to 200 Fur males had been detained and brought to an open space on the Deleig police station the place they had been tortured, prosecutors added. “Abd-Al-Rahman stood or walked at the backs of detainees, hit them… kicked them, and verbally abused them,” mentioned Khan. “He actually trampled on their rights,” the prosecutor mentioned.

‘Lengthy-awaited likelihood’

Abd-Al-Rahman is the 1st suspect to be attempted for battle crimes dedicated in Darfur-“an extraordinary long-awaited likelihood for the sufferers and the communities the Janjaweed terrorised to peer an alleged chief face justice,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) mentioned in a commentary. His trial may be the first-ever stemming from a UN Safety Council referral. Former president Omar al-Bashir and 3 others are nonetheless being sought by way of the ICC  for crimes in Darfur. Following his ouster in 2019, Bashir stays in Sudan regardless of requires him and two different buddies to be passed over to the ICC for prosecution. – AFP