A Malian extremist yesterday faced judgement in a landmark case before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for razing Timbuktu’s fabled shrines, with experts hoping it will send a strong message to safeguard the world’s ancient monuments.
A three-judge bench was to hand down its verdict and sentence against Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, the first extremist to stand trial at the tribunal in The Hague.
The historic verdict was to be the first to focus solely on cultural destruction as a war crime and the first arising out of the conflict in Mali.
Observers said they hope it acts as a deterrent to those bent on razing the world’s cultural heritage, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently condemned as “tearing at the fabric of societies.”
In an unprecedented move, al-Mahdi last month pleaded guilty to the single war crimes charge of “intentionally directing” attacks in 2012 on nine of Timbuktu’s mausoleums and the centuries-old door of the city’s Sidi Yahia mosque.
The slight, bespectacled man with a mop of curly hair asked the pardon of his people as videos were shown of him and other Muslim extremists knocking down ancient earthen shrines with pickaxes and bulldozers.
The residents of Timbuktu, which has now been restored, said they are ready to forgive him.
El-Boukhari Ben Essayouti, who oversaw the reconstruction with UNESCO assistance, said al-Mahdi’s trial was an important lesson.
The trial “has to be useful for something, showing to everyone that in the same way that we cannot kill another person with impunity, we cannot just destroy a world heritage site with impunity either,” he said.
Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu has been dubbed “the city of 333 saints” and the “pearl of the desert” for the number of Muslim sages buried there.
Revered as a center of Muslim learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was considered idolatrous by extremists who swept across Mali’s remote north in early 2012.
As the head of the so-called Hisbah or “Manners Brigade,” it was al-Mahdi, a former teacher and Muslim scholar, who gave the orders to ransack the sites.
Apologizing for his actions at the court, he said he had been overtaken by “evil spirits,” urging Muslims not to follow his example, and saying he wanted to seek the pardon of all Malians.
Prosecutors say al-Mahdi, born in 1975, was a member of the Ansar Dine, one of the extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which seized the northern territory before being mostly chased out by a French-led military intervention in January 2013.
Prosecutors have asked for a jail term of between nine and 11 years, which they said would recognize both the severity of the crime and the fact that al-Mahdi was the first person to plead guilty before the court.
“The verdict is eagerly awaited,” said Lassana Cisse, Mali’s national heritage director, adding that it must be a “punishment which sets an example.”
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
RSS