An extremist on Monday pleaded guilty at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to destroying shrines and damaging a mosque in the ancient city of Timbuktu, Mali, in the court’s first prosecution of the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime.
Prosecutors said that Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of an extremist group linked to al-Qaeda, took part in the smashing of a number of venerable centuries-old mud and stone buildings holding the tombs of holy men and scholars.
Al-Mahdi, a teacher who was born in or around 1975 near Timbuktu and who studied Islamic law in a Saudi-sponsored school in Libya, was also accused of leading a “morality brigade” that meted out punishments such as public floggings for minor infractions.
Photo: Reuters
“It is with deep regret and great pain that I had to enter a guilty plea on all the charges brought against me,” al-Mahdi told the court.
Begging for forgiveness, including from the people of Timbuktu, he said: “I would like them to look at me like a son that has lost his way, and to accept my regrets.”
Al-Mahdi said he was “influenced by a group of deviant people from al-Qaeda and Ansar Dine,” an offshoot in Mali, and added that he hoped his punishment would “serve as a purging of the evil spirits I got involved with.”
He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, but prosecutors agreed to request a sentence of nine to 11 years as part of a plea agreement.
Fatou Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor, said that it was al-Mahdi “who identified the sites to be destroyed and who provided the means” to do so, including pickaxes and crowbars.
Al-Mahdi is suspected of committing other crimes, but legal experts said the case was narrowly focused to highlight how cultural and religious buildings are deliberately singled out for destruction to obliterate an enemy’s history and identity.
“The courts have been slow to recognize this, but there is a clear link between crimes committed against people and attacks on their cultural heritage,” said Andras Riedlmayer, an academic of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard University.
“The ethnic cleansers in the Balkans, like the jihadis in Iraq, Syria and Timbuktu and other places, are keenly aware of the significance of this, which is why they devote so much personnel and resources to the destruction of religious and cultural landmarks,” Riedlmayer said.
If al-Mahdi had not pleaded guilty, his trial would probably have been a lengthy one, with witnesses brought to The Hague, Netherlands, from Timbuktu and other West African desert cities. Instead, the court can now turn directly to sentencing, with a few days of hearings to help the judges assess the case.
The case has its roots in 2012, when armed rebels and homegrown extremists allied with al-Qaeda established a breakaway mini-state in the northern half of the country.
The extremists imposed a harsh form of Islamic law on the population and recruited local people, including al-Mahdi, to help them enforce it.
After a French-led military force recaptured Timbuktu the next year, some of the militants disappeared and others appeared to receive amnesty under a peace deal.
Al-Mahdi, who was later arrested in Niger when French troops intercepted an arms-smuggling convoy, was the only one to end up in court in The Hague.
Most of the destroyed tombs in Timbuktu have been rebuilt using traditional masonry methods, financed by foreign donors. However, tensions still run high in the city, and many residents who fled from the extremists have yet to return — notably women.
Human rights activists have said that women and girls were particular targets of the extremists’ abuse in Timbuktu, including rape, forced marriage and sexual slavery, and that al-Mahdi’s brigade was complicit in that abuse; they have requested that the court expand the charges against him accordingly.
At the end of his prepared statement to the court, al-Mahdi said: “I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world not to get involved in the same acts I got involved with, because they will not lead to any good for humanity.”
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