The United Nations body entrusted with safeguarding the world’s cultural heritage on Saturday welcomed the transfer to the worldwide Criminal Court (ICC) of an alleged extremist for trial on charges of destroying religious and historical monuments in Timbuktu, Mali.
Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, also known as Abu Tourab, arrived shortly before dawn on Saturday in the Netherlands, where he was handed over to officials of the worldwide Criminal Court (ICC).
Authorities of Niger surrendered Al Faqi to the court following an arrest warrant issued on September 18.
Al Faqi headed the Ansar Dine, a Tuareg group linked to the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which took control of parts of northern Mali in 2012.
He is charged in connection with the destruction of 10 historic buildings including mausoleums and a mosque in Mali’s historic city in 2012. The prosecutor said the attacks were “a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations, and their religious and historical roots”.
Faqi “is expected to make a first appearance in the next few days, but an exact date has not been set”, Abdallah said. The extremists condemned the buildings as totems of idolatry.
“The people of Mali deserve justice for the attacks against their cities, their beliefs and their communities”, the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a statement.
“Intentional attacks against historic monuments and buildings dedicated to religion are serious crimes”, she added.
Bensouda had opened an investigation into the situation in Mali in January 2013, after it was reported to the tribunal by the government of Mali the previous year. In an interview with local journalists in 2012, he boasted of how his militia forced the city’s women to be veiled in public, and how women were ordered to stay home if they violated the clothing rules. At the peak of its influence in the 15th and 16th centuries, Timbuktu counted 180 schools and universities that received thousands of students from all over the Muslim world. They said the mausoleums were a blasphemous form of idol worship. “We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area”.
The ICC steps in when countries are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes committed on their territory.