THE HAGUE, Switzerland
A Sudanese militia chief Friday denied all charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, saying that prosecutors had got the wrong man.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman was addressing the ICC as his trial on charges of rape, murder, and torture came to an end.
Chief ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said he was a leading member of Sudan's infamous Janjaweed militia, also known by the nom de guerre Ali Kushayb, who participated "enthusiastically" in brutal war crimes.
But Abd-Al-Rahman told the court: "I am not Ali Kushayb. I do not know this person... I have nothing to do with the accusations against me."
He said he had handed himself in and claimed to be Ali Kushayb because he was "desperate."
"I had been waiting for two months in hiding, moving around all the time, and I was warned that the government wanted to arrest me, and I was afraid of being arrested," he said.
"If I hadn't said this, the court wouldn't have received me, and I would be dead now," added the suspect.
Abd-Al-Rahman fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020 when a new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC's investigation.
Four months later, he surrendered voluntarily.
Fighting broke out in Sudan's Darfur region when non-Arab tribes, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government.
Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed, a force drawn from among the region's nomadic tribes.
The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict.
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