Jihadist ‘deeply regrets’ ruining ancient shrines in Timbuktu
JIHADIST ADMITS TO DESTROYING MALI ARTIFACTS
An Islamist extremist pleaded guilty Monday at t he International Criminal Court 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 a jihadi group linked to al- Qaida, 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 self- appointed police organization that meted out punishments such as public floggings for minor infractions.
“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 Monday. Imploring 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 added that he was “influenced by a group of deviant people from al- Qaida and Ansar Dine,” an Islamist offshoot in Mali, and said that he hoped his punishment would “serve as a purging of the evil spirits I got involved with.”
At the end of his prepared statement, 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.”
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, who was raised as a Muslim in Gambia, 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. He and his associates “unleashed a destructive rage” that damaged priceless monuments for no reason other than their extremist world view, she said.
Although al-Mahdi is suspected of committing other crimes, legal experts said the case had been narrowly focused to highlight the growing awareness in international justice that cultural destruction is not only a war crime but also an intrinsic part of warfare aimed at destroying an opponent’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, a scholar of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard.
“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.”
Al- Mahdi’s guilty plea is likely to drastically change the course of what might have been a lengthy trial that would have involved bringing witnesses to The Hague from Timbuktu and other West African desert cities where jihadis held sway for almost a year.
Under court rules, there will be a few days of hearings to provide judges with more evidence to evaluate the scope of the case and to determine a sentence.
But even without a formal trial, the case, in which the hearings were broadcast by court video, was expected to attract wide interest.
The trial comes amid height- ened international concern about the fate of many cultural and religious monuments in the Middle East and North Africa, where sites of early civilization have deteriorated or been razed in armed conflicts.
Numerous places of worship, archeological remains, libraries, museums and other treasured sites have been destroyed by Islamist groups because they are seen to represent heretical values.
The Mali case has its roots in 2012, when armed rebels and homegrown Islamist jihadis allied with al- Qaida established a breakaway ministate in the northern half of Mali that lasted about a year.
In and around Timbuktu, most of the destroyed tombs have been rebuilt in the traditional masonry with funds from foreign donors.
Tensions are still high in the once- thriving trading town often visited by pilgrims and tourists. Jihadis and bandits roam the area, and not all of those who fled have returned — notably women, who were particular targets.
Alice Banens, a lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights, said lawsuits had been filed in Mali on behalf of women and girls who had been raped. She said that numerous women had been forced to marry jihadis, and that others were captured and used as sexual slaves by the foreign fighters.
There are some precedents in modern international law for giving cultural destruction a more central place among war crimes.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has handed down convictions for the shelling of architectural jewels in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik and the Bosnian city of Mostar. The court found that the attacks were not justified for military reasons, but that they had been intended to break the people’s morale.
In Bosnia, where Bosnian Serbs waged a three- year campaign to drive Muslims from their homes in the 1990s, close to 1,200 mosques were damaged or destroyed to discourage Bosnian Muslims from returning, researchers at the court found.
Catholic and Orthodox churches were also destroyed in the Bosnian conflict, but far fewer of them. In Mali, where 16 tombs were destroyed and some ancient mosques disfigured, the numbers may seem relatively small.
PROSECUTORS AGREED TO REQUEST A SENTENCE OF NINE TO 11 YEARS.