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THE HAGUE: Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday accused a Malian of war crimes for “a callous” 2012 attack on the centuries-old world heritage site of Timbuktu.
“We must stand up to the destruction and defacing of our common heritage,” said chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda as she unveiled a single war crimes charge against Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi.
“Humanity’s collective consciousness was shocked by the destruction of these sites. Such an attack must not go unpunished,” she insisted at the tribunal, set up in 2002 to try the world’s worst crimes.
Faqi is the first militant to appear before the Hague-based ICC and the first person to face a single war crimes charge for an attack on a global historic and cultural monument.
The case comes amid a global outcry over the razing by the so-called Daesh group of other irreplacable cultural and religious sites in Iraq and Syria which bear testament to the world’s collective history.
Faqi is said to have jointly ordered or carried out the destruction of nine mausoleums and Timbuktu’s famous Sidi Yahia mosque, dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries.
Bensouda called the attacks a “callous assault on the dignity of an entire population and their cultural identity.”
Founded between the 11th and 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu was dubbed “the city of 333 saints” and added to the list of UNESCO world heritage sites in 1988.
Despite having been a center of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was considered idolatrous by the militants.