On October 6, 2025, ICC judges convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kosheib) on 27 charges involving war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2003 and 2004 in 4 villages—Kodoom, Bindisi, Mukjar, and Deleig—in West Darfur. The judges also issued a decision outlining the timing for sentencing proceedings.

“The ICC’s long-awaited landmark conviction for serious crimes in Darfur provides the first opportunity for victims and communities terrorized by the Janjaweed to see a measure of justice before the court,” said Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “With the current conflict in Sudan producing new generations of victims and compounding the suffering of those targeted in the past, the verdict should spur action by governments to advance justice by all possible means.”

Several other cases concerning crimes committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2008 have been brought before the ICC. They are the result of an investigation that followed the United Nations Security Council’s referral in 2005 of the situation in Darfur to the court’s prosecutor.

The Omar al-Bashir government in Sudan established the so-called Janjaweed militia, which worked alongside Sudanese government forces during a brutal counterinsurgency against rebel groups to carry out a systematic ethnic cleansing campaign.

The campaign targeted civilians from the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, from which rebel groups recruited. At the time, international attention was riveted on the region and the Security Council referral—the first of its kind—validated the court’s essential mandate, only two years after it opened its doors.

Human Rights Watch called for the ICC to investigate Ali Kosheib for his alleged crimes in Darfur in a 2005 report. ICC judges issued a first arrest warrant against Ali Kosheib in 2007, but he remained at large for over a decade. In 2013, Human Rights Watch documented Ali Kosheib’s involvement in the destruction of the town of Abu Jeradil and surrounding villages in Central Darfur. A second ICC warrant was made public after Ali Kosheib surrendered and was transferred to ICC custody in June 2020.

The judges convicted Ali Kosheib on charges including murder, rape, intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, pillage, destruction of the property of an adversary, forcible transfer of the population, outrages upon personal dignity, persecution, cruel treatment, and other inhumane acts.

The verdict comes more than two years into the current conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group born out of an effort by the government to integrate the Janjaweed into a formal structure.

Both warring parties have committed war crimes, such as executing detainees and mutilating their bodies, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law, including in Khartoum, North Darfur, Gezira, and South and West Kordofan states, Human Rights Watch has found.

The RSF has committed crimes against humanity, including in an ethnic cleansing campaign in West Darfur in 2023 against ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab communities, and widespread sexual violence in Khartoum, the capital, since 2023. The RSF and its allied militias have also raped scores of women and girls in the context of sexual slavery in South Kordofan since September 2023.

The ICC prosecutor’s office signaled in January 2025 that it expects to request arrest warrants based on its current investigations into crimes committed since April 2023 in West Darfur. The ICC’s mandate remains limited to Darfur under the Security Council referral.

The UN-backed Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan and the African Union’s Joint Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan are mandated to investigate current violations across Sudan, but they have no authority to prosecute. In the current conflict, no international body can prosecute international crimes committed in regions other than Darfur.

To hold those responsible to account, governments should back the ICC’s ongoing work while also supporting comprehensive justice pathways led by the Sudanese people to address crimes committed since April 2023, Human Rights Watch said. This should include seeking to expand ICC jurisdiction to all of Sudan, working toward an internationalized justice mechanism for Sudan, and encouraging cases in other countries’ courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The verdict comes as the ICC is facing serious threats from those opposed to accountability, including the current Trump administration in the United States. The US never joined the court but was a clear supporter of the Darfur investigation across multiple administrations. Prominent US congressional leaders have applauded the ICC’s work in Darfur, and the US provided extensive financial support to efforts to document serious international crimes in Sudan.

The Trump administration, in a bid to thwart the court’s work in Palestine, has imposed sanctions against the ICCs officials, a UN human rights expert, and three Palestinian human rights groups. These sanctions threaten the court’s work, including in Sudan, where victims have waited for more than 20 years for justice.

The Ali Kosheib verdict is a critical reminder of the importance of the ICC as a permanent court of last resort, when all other avenues to justice are blocked, Human Rights Watch said.

Governments should strongly condemn US moves against the court, redouble their commitment to cooperate with and support the ICC, including by securing arrests and ensuring the court has adequate funding, and call for rescinding the US sanctions program.

Darfuris and activists in Sudan and across Africa long campaigned for the surrender of Ali Kosheib and other ICC suspects. Local communities and displaced Darfuris in Sudan demonstrated in support of Ali Kosheib facing justice and held vigils for victims of attacks for which he was alleged to be responsible.

Former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and two other former Sudanese high-level officials wanted by the ICC, including Ahmed Haroun, former state minister for humanitarian affairs and former governor of Southern Kordofan state, have yet to be handed over. The Sudanese authorities should immediately surrender al-Bashir and the others, Human Rights Watch said.

“Both parties to the conflict continue to commit atrocity crimes across Sudan, fueled by rampant impunity and claiming thousands of victims,” Evenson said. “ICC member countries and justice-supporting governments should make clear their support for the ICC and commit publicly to explore all avenues to close the accountability gap in Sudan, so that victims of today’s crimes will not have to wait two decades for justice.”