Jihadist likely to admit culture war crime
A jihadist from Mali will become the first person convicted of cultural destruction as a war crime if, as expected, he pleads guilty at the opening of his trial at the International Criminal Court.
Lawyers for Ahmad al-faqi almahdi say he will ask for forgiveness for demolishing ancient mausoleums in Timbuktu during the Islamist takeover of the world heritage site.
His plea would mark Al-mahdi as the first person to be charged solely with a war crime against heritage and the first suspect to plead guilty before the court in the Hague. He is also the first Islamist to appear before the court.
His trial is the result of a campaign by the United Nations’ cultural agency, Unesco, to have the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage treated as a war crime.
The case fulfils the dream of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term genocide in 1944 and saw it adopted into international law. He failed, however, to get the same recognition for what he called ‘‘acts of vandalism’’.
Irina Bokova, Unesco’s director general, has hailed al-mahdi’s trial as an historical precedent that will bring those who deliberately destroy cultural heritage before courts of justice. She said wanton destruction had become ‘‘a core feature of modern conflict’’.
She cited the destruction of monuments by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, including those in the ancient cities of Hatra and Palmyra, as examples of deliberate acts of cultural vandalism. Isis denounced those monuments as ‘‘idolatrous’’ and spread videos of their destruction for propaganda purposes.
Al-mahdi, who sat on an Islamic court set up by Malian jihadists allied to al Qaeda, is said to have jointly ordered or carried out the destruction of Timbuktu’s Sidi Yahia mosque from the 15th and 16th centuries as well as nine mausoleums. About 4000 ancient manuscripts were also lost, stolen or burned before French forces pushed the Islamists out of Timbuktu. Al-mahdi’s lawyer said he was acting under what he understood to be divine orders but had come to regret his actions.
Tom Maliti, a Kenyan journalist monitoring the trial for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the case would set a precedent.
He recalled that the Taliban went unpunished for the destruction of Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas. ‘‘This case raises the prospect that there will no longer be impunity for cultural destruction,’’ he said.
Amr al-azm, a Syrian professor of archaeology based in America, said he was happy that cultural destruction was being called a war crime. He was not confident, however, that the case would have much impact in the Middle East.
‘‘I’m pleased to see that justice is seen to be done but at the same time I’m thinking, why couldn’t we have done something to prevent this from taking place in the first place? The damage is done and more importantly I don’t think it will be a deterrent when atrocities are committed for specific ideological and propaganda purposes.’’
Azm, a member of the Syrian opposition, said he feared a clumsy act of reconstruction in Palmyra by the regime or the Russians seeking their own propaganda victory. He said: ‘‘To erase the story of what has happened to a monument is itself cultural vandalism.’’
Charlie Winter, a London-based analyst specialising in Islamic State propaganda, said the proceedings would have no impact on the group. ‘‘In causing international uproar, whether people being massacred or monuments being bombed, it doesn’t care,’’ he said. ‘‘It craves this kind of attention.’’
The destruction of sites such as Ninevah and Palmyra got a big reaction from the West, however, it achieves much the same effect with terrorist attacks in Europe, he said.
Winter noted that Isis supporters tended to be more excited by gore than the destruction of monuments.