A Sudanese militia leader was found guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur region 20 years ago, in a conflict that became a prelude to the country’s present-day disaster.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman was a leader of the Janjaweed militia, which killed hundreds of thousands of members of Darfur’s non-Arab population in the early 2000s, sparking one of the world’s gravest and most enduring humanitarian crises.
After the war, many Janjaweed fighters joined the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring parties in Sudan’s current civil war. The RSF is once again besieging Darfur, putting millions of lives at risk, with the conflict sparking the first declaration of famine globally in years.