It constitutes a rare success for international judicial bodies battling against a swelling wave of official lawlessness. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a commander of the infamous, state-backed Janjaweed paramilitary group that committed mass extermination in the Darfur region in the mid-2000s, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars recently by the world court. He had been convicted on 27 separate counts of violations of the laws of war and crimes against humanity.
Despite the involvement of, Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, is the very first person to be found guilty of horrific acts in Darfur, an area currently again the scene of appalling violence in the nation's civil war. The ICC has issued charges against Omar al-Bashir, the country's leader at the time, with genocide and war crimes. Ahmad Harun, a former government minister, is confronted with similar allegations. However both individuals have so far managed to avoid capture.
“I have no regrets,” he told me, dismissing an ICC arrest warrant alleging his involvement in up to 200,000 deaths in Darfur as politically driven. “What I have done was legal, it was my duty, it was my duty.”
Haughty claims of having broken zero laws, of possessing nothing to answer for, of simply performing one’s “responsibility,” get to the heart of a mounting modern issue: official unaccountability. Guilty or not, neither Bashir nor Harun thought they would ever face global accountability, and so far they have been proven right. In this conviction they are identical to the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu, the American Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and the Russian Vladimir Putin.
Three Figures Facing Allegations and Defiant
This unpalatable group of three are variously alleged to have committed heinous acts by the ICC, the UN, and human rights monitors. Each is said to have overseen the calculated slaughter, mistreatment or large-scale kidnapping of civilian civilians. All three categorically deny any wrongdoing. All claim their actions are justified, regardless of what statutes, public opinion or simple moral decency may say. All smugly believe they are above the law.
Netanyahu is battling on several fronts to salvage his political life and avoid incarceration. Similar to Gaza, his personal reputation is now destroyed. The Israeli leader wants his protracted trial in Jerusalem’s local court on fraud and bribery charges to be stopped in the “national interest”. He would prefer to demonstrate his innocence, he claims, but in a gesture of public-spirited generosity, to heal the country’s rifts, he says he’s prepared to receive a presidential pardon.
The audacity of the man! Netanyahu has repeatedly, cynically exploited those same splits to cling to authority. Full to bursting with chutzpah, he is also opposing a full, independent investigation into his government’s disastrous security failures before the 7 October 2023 Hamas assaults. Rival politician Avigdor Lieberman, among others, charges him of engineering a “cover-up” to protect himself.
Dodging Accountability in Gaza and Beyond
Yet it is Netanyahu’s despicable bid to dodge a day of judgment with the ICC over Gaza – where his government is charged with acts of genocide – that most dramatically illustrates the pernicious impact of official unaccountability. Rather than present a defense in a courtroom, Netanyahu hides behind Donald Trump in Washington or skulks at home to avoid arrest. In Gaza, meanwhile, hungry children continue to endure agony – under his command.
If Hegseth, the Pentagon’s new action-oriented man, swapped his too-tight trousers for a looser fit, perhaps he would feel less inclined to be aggressively stubborn. He’s somehow persuaded himself that killing dozens of unidentified people on boats in the Caribbean, on uncorroborated suspicion of drug smuggling, is desirable and legal – and not an unwarranted act of brutality.
Various spurious justifications are advanced. The US claims it has obtained “information” that proves its allegations (though not from Britain, which disapproves of extrajudicial killing and is declining to help). The those killed, considered to belong to “terrorist groups”, are lawful targets, it contends. Courts and attorneys can state what they like. For Hegseth, Trump’s dandyish hitman, only his boss's opinion matters.
Lawlessness Equals Anarchy
That’s what impunity looks like. That, precisely there, is the termination to the rule of law. That’s the world’s most powerful state saying it no longer honors fundamental rules that, imperfectly yet vitally, hold human society together. Off the coast of Venezuela, US forces, killing at will and seizing oil tankers, act just like Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa or Yemen’s Houthi rebels, randomly firing missiles at Red Sea shipping. Unaccountability heralds lawlessness.
Little wonder that Putin – yet another strongman on the run by the ICC – believes he, too, can get away with murder. Indeed, in his infamous 28-point Ukraine “proposal”, Trump attempted to secure immunity from prosecution for the Russian leader. He is also trying to cripple the ICC with sanctions. What kind of example is now set by the US? How can Britain and Europe continue to pretend it is a like-minded partner, or a friend?
Marauding overseas as they do at home, Trump’s unrestrained, deadly enforcers are the new Janjaweed. And like Ali Kushayb, Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Hegseth and all the other smirking perpetrators must eventually be held to account by a tribunal.
