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The destruction of shrines in Mali’s fabled city of Timbuktu was a result of the “negligence” of the west African country’s French colonisers, the International Criminal Court heard Monday.
A police chief who is accused of playing a pivotal role during the 2012-13 jihadist occupation of the city, known as the “Pearl of the Desert”, is on trial at the Hague-based tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The events of 2012 are the result of corruption and the negligence of the French colonisers,” said Melinda Taylor, defending Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud.
“The state of Mali was a fiction created by French colonisers that existed on paper, but never in reality,” Taylor told the judges on the opening day.
The French left the “north of the country to fend for themselves,” according to tribal and religious practices, the lawyer said.
Timbuktu was occupied by the jihadist group Ansar Dine, one of the Al-Qaeda-linked factions which controlled Mali in 2012 before being driven out by a French-led international intervention.
During the occupation, the jihadists also took pickaxes to 14 of the town’s famous mausoleums of revered Muslim figures.
Al Hassan however “should not be convicted because he happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time and because of his ethnicity,” said Taylor.
“The question is not whether these crimes were committed in Timbuktu but whether this person sitting in front of you should bear the responsibility for these crimes,” she added.
Prosecutors say Al Hassan, 44, was a key figure in the police and court system set up by the militants after they exploited an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to take over cities in Mali’s volatile north.
Al Hassan committed “unimaginable crimes”, personally overseeing corporal punishments, including floggings and amputations as well as arranging for women and girls to be forced to marry militants as part of a system of gender-based persecution, prosecutors said.
He is the second Islamist to face trial at the ICC for the destruction of the Timbuktu’s shrines, following a landmark 2016 ruling at the world’s only permanent war crimes court.
ICC judges found Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi guilty of directing attacks on the UNESCO World Heritage site and sentenced him to nine years in jail.