An alleged Islamic extremist charged with involvement in the destruction of religious buildings in the historic city of Timbuktu in Mali in 2012 has been arrested and sent to the worldwide Criminal Court to face justice.
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The court announced in the early hours of Saturday that Al Faqi was surrendered to the court by Niger and transferred to The Hague.
The court said Ahmad Al Mahdi Al Faqi, known as Abu Tourab, had headed Hesbah, or “Manners’ Brigade”, in 2012, which helped execute the decisions of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu.
“Intentional attacks against historic monuments and buildings dedicated to religion are serious crimes”, she added.
Al Faqi stands accused of ordering attacks on a mosque and a number of sacred tombs during the summer of 2012.
This is the first such case and it breaks new ground for the protection of humanitys shared cultural heritage and values, Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said in a statement today.
During that time, Timbuktu was under the control of two millitias, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and an affiliated group of Tuareg rebels called Ansar Dine.
Faqi “is expected to make a first appearance in the next few days, but an exact date has not been set”, Abdallah said.
The mausoleums were shrines to Timbuktu’s founding fathers, who had been venerated as saints by most of the city’s inhabitants.
“The people of Mali deserve justice for the attacks against their cities, their beliefs and their communities”, said a statement on Saturday by the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda.
Timbuktu, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was an affluent gold-trading city and a centre of Islamic teaching from the 13th to the 17th centuries.
“Destroying a mausoleum is like murdering someone, their history and their past”, he said. “I will closely follow the trial”.
Al Faqi is charged with the destruction of 10 historic buildings in Timbuktu, including mausoleums and a mosque. It is also the first case to be brought before the ICC – the world’s only permanent war crimes court – for the unrest that has racked the west African nation of Mali.
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However, 370,000 of the priceless parchments were smuggled to Bamako in 2012 to protect them from the jihadists, and archivists in Mali’s capital are now painstakingly classifying and digitising them.
