It represents an infrequent triumph for international courts of law battling to resist a swelling tide of official lawlessness. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a commander of the infamous, government-supported Janjaweed militia that committed genocide in Sudan's Darfur area from 2003 to 2005, was sentenced to 20 years in prison recently by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He had been found guilty on 27 separate counts of violations of the laws of war and crimes against humanity.
Despite hundreds of militia members taking part, Abd-al-Rahman, who also goes by the name Ali Kushayb, is the first ever person to be found guilty of atrocities in Darfur, a region currently again the scene of appalling violence in Sudan's ongoing war. The ICC has formally accused Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president during that period, with acts of genocide and crimes of war. Ahmad Harun, a one-time government minister, is confronted with comparable allegations. But both individuals have thus far managed to avoid arrest.
“I've got zero remorse,” he stated, dismissing an ICC arrest warrant alleging his complicity in up to 200,000 fatalities in Darfur as motivated by politics. “What I did was legal, it was my responsibility, it was my duty.”
Haughty assertions of breaking no laws, of having no case to answer, of merely doing one’s “responsibility,” get to the very core of a mounting modern issue: state impunity. Guilty or not, neither Bashir nor Harun thought they would ever confront international justice, and so far they have been proven right. In this belief they are identical to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, the American defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the Russian Vladimir Putin.
A Trio Accused and In Denial
This unpalatable group of three are differently alleged to have committed heinous acts by the ICC, the UN, and human rights monitors. Each is alleged to have overseen the cold-blooded killing, mistreatment or mass abduction of civilian civilians. All three categorically reject all accusations. All assert their conduct are justified, no matter what the law, the court of public opinion or simple moral decency may dictate. All smugly believe they are untouchable.
Netanyahu is battling on several fronts to salvage his career and avoid jail. Like Gaza, his personal reputation is now destroyed. Israel's leader desires his protracted trial in Jerusalem’s district court on corruption and bribe-taking charges to be halted in the “national interest”. He claims he would rather to prove his innocence, he states, but in an act of patriotic magnanimity, to mend the country’s divisions, he says he’s prepared to receive a presidential pardon.
The audacity of the man! Netanyahu has persistently, with calculation exploited those same divisions to cling to power. Full to bursting with gall, he is also opposing a comprehensive, independent investigation into his government’s disastrous lapses before the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks. Rival politician Avigdor Lieberman, along with others, charges him of orchestrating a “cover-up” to protect himself.
Evading Justice in Gaza and Beyond
Yet it is Netanyahu’s contemptible bid to avoid a reckoning with the ICC over Gaza – where his government is charged with acts of genocide – that most dramatically illustrates the pernicious impact of state unaccountability. Instead of defend himself in court, Netanyahu seeks refuge behind Donald Trump in Washington or remains hidden at home to evade detention. In Gaza, meanwhile, hungry children continue to suffer – under his command.
If Hegseth, the Pentagon’s recent GI Joe man, exchanged his overly tight trousers for a looser fit, maybe he would feel less inclined to be bloody-minded. He’s somehow convinced himself that killing dozens of unknown people on boats in the Caribbean, on unsubstantiated suspicion of drug smuggling, is acceptable and legal – and not a gratuitous act of brutality.
Several spurious justifications are advanced. The US claims it has obtained “information” that substantiates its allegations (but not from Britain, which frowns on extrajudicial killing and is refusing to help). The victims, deemed to belong to “terrorist groups”, are lawful targets, it argues. Judges and attorneys can state what they like. For Hegseth, Trump’s foppish enforcer, only one man's opinion matters.
Lawlessness Equals Chaos
That’s the face of unaccountability. That, precisely there, is the termination to the supremacy of law. That’s the planet's strongest state declaring it does not honors basic rules that, flawed as they may be yet vitally, hold human society together. Off the coast of Venezuela, US forces, using lethal force arbitrarily and taking control of oil tankers, behave just like Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa or Yemen’s Houthi rebels, randomly launching missiles at Red Sea shipping. Impunity heralds lawlessness.
Little wonder that Putin – another thug wanted by the ICC – reckons he, too, can escape punishment for murder. Indeed, in his notorious 28-point Ukraine “proposal”, Trump sought protection from prosecution for Russia's leader. He is also trying to cripple the ICC with sanctions. What sort of example is now set by the US? How can Britain and Europe still act as if it is a similarly-minded ally, or a friend?
Acting lawlessly overseas as they do at home, Trump’s lawless, deadly enforcers are the modern Janjaweed. And like Ali Kushayb, Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Hegseth and all the other grinning killers must one day be held to account by a tribunal.
