THE HAGUE // An unprecedented case opens on Monday at the International Criminal Court when an alleged extremist from Mali is set to plead guilty to the war crime of cultural destruction. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi is the first to be tried for the crime. He is accused of destroying the Unesco world heritage site of Timbuktu in 2012 and is the person to.
Mahdi has made clear "his wish to plead guilty" to orchestrating the destruction of nine mausoleums and a section of the revered Sidi Yahia mosque, which date back to the 15th and 16th centuries, and experts hope his trial and sentencing will send a message that such cultural destruction will not go unpunished.
Plucked from the edges of the Sahara to a courtroom on the sand dunes of The Hague, Al Mahdi has until now been unknown to the outside world and is the first alleged extremist to be charged with any crime arising out of the Mali conflict.
He stands accused of the war crime of "intentionally directing attacks" against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between 30 June and 11 July 2012.
"The destruction of cultural heritage has become a tactic of war to disseminate fear and hatred in modern conflicts," Unesco director general Irina Bokovo wrote recently in the online magazine International Criminal Justice Today.
Such attacks seek "to tear at the fabric of society, to deny human rights and to quash the rule of law," she said, adding it was "critical" they should "not go unpunished."
ICC prosecutors allege that al-Mahdi, born in 1975, was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) north-east of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
As the head of the "Hisbah" or the "Manners Brigade" he ordered the attacks on the shrines. The ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda insists that "what is at stake here is not just walls and stones".
Founded between the 5th and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu has been dubbed "the city of 333 saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there.
Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, the site was condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.
The attacks were "a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations, and their religious and historical roots," Bensouda said, and "the magnitude of the loss ... was felt by the whole of humanity".
The site has now been reconstructed and a French-led operation has mostly chased the jihadists out of the area, although extremist groups still pose a threat.
Al-Mahdi, handed over to the ICC by Niger in late 2015, intends to plead guilty, as he is "a Muslim who believes in justice," defence lawyer Mohamed Aouini told a June hearing.
"He wants to be truthful to himself and he wants to admit the acts that he has committed," Aouini said, adding that al-Mahdi also sought "pardon" for his acts.
Some 55 sites around the world, including the Bamiyan valley where the Taliban blew up ancient giant Buddhas in 2001 and Palmyra in Syria vandalised by the Islamic State group in the past two years, remain on UNESCO's endangered list.
However some observers are concerned that no other charges, such as for sexual violence committed during the conflict, have been brought.
"On the one hand we are really excited to see this being put up front as something that's not really been prosecuted before in such seriousness," said Mariana Pena, a legal expert with the Open Society Justice Initiative.
"On the other hand we are a bit disappointed that other crimes are not being put up for prosecution."
The case has moved swiftly through the usually ponderous ICC process, and sentencing is likely come soon after the trial, which is due to last five days.
But further prosecutions for such attacks won't prove easy, experts warn, and more vandalism could follow as jihadists witness the "success" of their strategy, thanks in part to the internet.
Archaeology scholar Christopher Jones, who has catalogued dozens of attacks by ISIL in Iraq and Syria since 2014 on his blog "Gates of Nineveh" says it's not just about wiping out a culture.
"By destroying a Shiite mosque, you're also erasing an alternate system of belief which stands in opposition to the very things ISIL stands for. It aims to disconnect people from what ties them to their homes, so they have no past and nothing to go back for."
* Agence France-Presse
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