Cultural terrorismA first: ICC sentences Islamist to nine years for cultural destruction in Timbuktu

The International Criminal Court sentenced an Islamist militant to nine years in jail for ordering members of the Islamist Ansar Dine group in northern Mali to destroy historic shrines and mausoleums in Timbuktu, and burn hundreds of ancient books. The destruction took place in between April and December 2012, when the Islamists controlled the break-away northern Mali – which they called the Republic of Azawad – after chasing the Mali army away.

A three-judge panel in The Hague sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdiin the first-ever case of an individual being charged with war crimes solely for cultural destruction.

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Also read:

“Mali, Tuareg rebels sign historic peace agreement,” HSNW, 22 June 2015

Ben Frankel, “Short-sighted Tuareg leadership dooms independence quest,” HSNW, 17 July 2012

“Tuaregs set Sahara aflame, proclaim new country,” HSNW, 30 April 2012

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ABC News reports thatobservers hope that the prosecution of Mahdi will serve as a deterrence to others, who must now take into account the possibility of punishment of they destroy historically or culturally important sites.

Mahdi is also the first Islamist militant to be brought before the ICC.

Mahdi, who was a junior civil servant in Timbuktu before the city was taken over by Ansa Dine, pleaded  guilty last month to the single charge of “intentionally directing” attacks in 2012 on nine of Timbuktu’s mausoleums and the centuries-old door of the city’s Sidi Yahia mosque.

After the court was shown videos of Mahdi and fellow Islamists using pickaxes and bulldozers to knock down ancient earthen shrines and burn books and scrolls, Mahdi asked the people of Mali, especially fellow members of the Tuareg tribe, for forgiveness.

International cultural organizations have launched a campaign to restore the destroyed shrines, and last week one of the most important shrines damaged by the Islamists was officially re-opened to the public.

El-Boukhari Ben Essayouti, the Malian historian who received UNESCO assistance to restore the mausoleum, told UPI that Mahdi’s trial was an important lesson.

The trial “has to be useful for something, showing to everyone that in the same way that we cannot kill another person with impunity, we cannot just destroy a world heritage site with impunity either,” he said.

Timbuktu was a center of learning and commerce 500 years ago, and is famous for its shrines. Islamic scholars in the city were among the developers of the tolerant Sufi branch of Islam, regarded as heretic by the more fundamentalist and literalist versions of Islam, like Wahhabism, practiced in Saudi Arabia.

In Iraq and Syria, too, shrines and mausoleums of more moderate Islamic doctrines were destroyed by the Wahhabi ISIS militants when the group came into control of areas where such sites were located.