A Malian jihadist yesterday pleaded guilty to ordering attacks on historic sites in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu in 2012, in the first case of an Islamist facing worldwide justice for cultural destruction.
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As his International Criminal Court (ICC) trial started Monday, Ahmad Al Faqi al-Mahdi told judges he was entering the guilty plea “with deep regret and great pain”.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor compared the Timbuktu case with the destruction of historic ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who have also turned artefacts from the Mosul Museum, Iraq’s second largest museum, into rubble.
The jihadists considered the shrines, as well as priceless ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu’s golden age, to be idolatrous. The defence and the legal team for the victims will also address the three-judge bench during the five days set aside for the trial.
As the Two-Way has reported, the trial against Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi is believed to be the first time desecration of cultural heritage has been prosecuted as a war crime by the tribunal in The Hague.
“To attack and destroy the sites and cultural and religious symbols of communities is an assault on their history”, told AFP the prosecutor Fatou Bensouda: “No person who destroys that embodies the soul and roots of a people should be allowed to escape justice”.
By late June in 2012, Mahdi had grown frustrated by the townspeople’s unwillingness to desist from their long-held practice of worshipping Timbuktu’s shrines of Muslim saints. A Malian jihadist sought forgiveness as he pleaded guilty today to the 2012 attacks on the fabled city of Timbuktu, and urged Muslims not to follow such “evil” ways at his unprecedented war crimes trial.
The former trainee teacher is alleged to have been an accomplice of militants from the al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine group, who destroyed the ancient shrines with guns and pick-axes.
“I am really sorry, I am really remorseful, and I regret all the damage that my actions have caused”, Mahdi said following his guilty plea.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commended the court for bringing the case against Al Mahdi, saying it “draws our attention to an increasingly worrying trend of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in situations of armed conflict”, according to a statement released by his spokesman.
Founded in the fifth century, Timbuktu rose to prominence in the 15th and 16th centuries as a center of Islamic learning and helped the spread of Islam across Africa. “They were historic monuments that did not constitute military targets”.
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Seven mausoleums on the UNESCO World Heritage site were targeted in the attack.
