previous civil war more than two decades ago. The International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a sentencing hearing for Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb) on Tuesday.

The previous day, prosecutor Julian Nicholls had demanded the maximum penalty for the “enthusiastic, energetic and effective perpetrator of abuses carried out in the western Darfur region”. Prosecutors say that among his crimes, Abd-Al-Rahman killed two people with an axe. “You literally have an axe murderer before you,” Nicholls told the judges in The Hague, as Abd-Al-Rahman looked on. “Only a life sentence will serve the interest of retribution and deterrence.” Abd-Al-Rahman’s defence lawyers, who are asking for a seven-year jail term, will present their case during Tuesday and Wednesday’s hearings. Last month, Abd-Al-Rahman was convicted of 27 counts, including mass murders and rapes, for leading government-backed Janjaweed militia forces in the Darfur region in western Sudan on a campaign of killing and destruction from 2003 to 2004. It was the first time the ICC had convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur, a region that is once again seeing mass atrocities amid a vicious civil war. (Aljazeera)