Now Ahmad al-Mahdi, a former employee with Mali’s education department, is facing war crimes charges at the Hague for directing this cultural decimation, pleading guilty Monday at the worldwide criminal court-the ICC’s first prosecution of such a case, the New York Times reports.
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At the start of the trial, prosecutors revealed they had made a deal with the defence team to ask for a jail term of nine to 11 years.
Prosecutors showed judges photos and videos of rebels wielding pick axes, sticks and axes to attack a mosque’s door and small, brick-built mausoleums in the city.
Five days have been set aside for al Mahdi’s trial in the Netherlands before a three-judge ICC panel.
Waves of unrest had led to a military coup in March that year and an all-out rebellion in the country’s north, led by Tuareg groups who were soon sidelined by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists, including the Ansar Dine group.
Mahdi, aged about 40, is also the first Islamic extremist charged by the ICC and the first person to face a solo allegation of cultural destruction.
There are some precedents in modern global law for giving cultural destruction a more central place among war crimes.
Mahdi’s guilty plea is likely to drastically change the course of what might have been a lengthy trial that would have involved bringing witnesses to The Hague from Timbuktu and other West African desert cities where jihadis held sway for nearly a year.
In 2012, the world witnessed the tragic destruction of the mausoleums in Timbuktu – one of Africa’s spiritual and intellectual capitals in the 15th and 16th centuries – inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
As the head of the “Hisbah” or the “Manners Brigade” he ordered the attacks on the shrines, ICC prosecutors say. Al-Mahdi belonged to Islamist group Ansar Dine, who have links to al-Qaeda.
Until now, the ICC and other worldwide courts have focused on crimes against individuals, such as murder, rape, and torture. Given his guilty plea, it is expected that al-Mahdi’s trial will conclude within a week.
UNESCO has immediately raised the alarm after the destruction of the first Mausoleum in 2012 and brought it to the attention of the Court. It was eventually driven out of Mali in a French-led intervention.
Timbuktu was formed by the Tuareg Tribes in the fifth century.
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UNESCO renews also its full support to the people and government of Mali, and in particular to the local communities of Timbuktu, who have shown huge courage and determination to rebuild their Heritage, with the support of the worldwide community.
