KHARTOUM, 21 October 2004 — Under international pressure to crack down on Arab militiamen blamed for attacking African villagers in Darfur, a Sudanese official said yesterday that authorities here have handed down their first known conviction against a Janjaweed leader, jailing him for three years.
Mohammed Barbary Ahab El-Nabi, an Awalad Zeid tribal leader in the western town of El-Geneina, was sentenced last week after being found guilty of “looting cows and burning properties” in the village of Dory Monkish, said Abdel Moniem Taha, the director of human rights at the Sudanese Justice Ministry.
Taha said that police arrested El-Nabi on Oct. 4 and that an El-Geneina judge sentenced him on Oct. 14 to three years jail and fined him 10 million Sudanese pounds ($39,000). El-Nabi has been given 15 days to appeal, but it was not immediately clear if he had lodged an appeal yet.
Taha said El-Nabi was the first known Janjaweed leader to be arrested and brought to justice.
Sudanese authorities, under pressure to end 18 months of violence in Darfur that has killed tens of thousands and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, have said previously that they have jailed Janjaweed members responsible for attacks on African villagers.
But human rights groups have argued that those sentenced were only petty criminals, not militiamen.
Sudanese officials have complained that police could not track down alleged Janjaweed elements for several reasons, including the lack of security in Darfur and their restricted ability to move freely in the area, which is the size of France, because of a rarely adhered to April cease-fire agreement.
A UN Security Council resolution on Sudan passed Sept. 18 called on the Sudanese government to bring to justice “Janjaweed leaders responsible for human rights and international humanitarian law violations in Darfur.”
UN officials in Sudan were not immediately available for comment on the sentencing.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is appealing for donors to urgently help meet a shortfall of $200 million needed for its humanitarian program in Darfur.
During a visit to London on Tuesday, Annan said it was “important that we get the necessary resources to carry on our humanitarian program” in Darfur, where a 20-month civil war has killed an estimated 70,000 people and displaced another 1.5 million.
“We are about a little over $200 million short and I would appeal to all governments with capacity to help, and help urgently,” Annan said at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The African Union will invite Sudan’s government and rebels from the Darfur back to the negotiating table today in a bid to show that the troubled continent is able to handle its own crises.
The AU peace initiative has won international support but non-African countries, led by the United States, have warned that the world cannot stand by indefinitely as casualties mount in the 20-month-old civil conflict in western Sudan.
