The worldwide felony courtroom (ICC) has convicted a jihadist police chief of conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity dedicated throughout a reign of terror within the Malian metropolis of Timbuktu.
Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 46, was discovered responsible of crimes together with torture and outrages upon private dignity.
The presiding choose, Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, mentioned Al Hassan performed a “key position” overseeing amputations and floggings as police chief when the Ansar Dine Islamist group seized management of Timbuktu for nearly a 12 months from early 2012.
“Al Hassan has been discovered responsible by majority choice of conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity, together with torture, merciless remedy and outrages upon private dignity, for the general public flogging of 13 members of the inhabitants,” Mindua mentioned.
He was nonetheless acquitted of the conflict crimes of rape and sexual slavery, in addition to the crime in opposition to humanity of pressured marriage.
He was additionally acquitted of the conflict crime of attacking protected objects. Ansar Dine fighters used pickaxes, shovels and hammers to shatter earthen tombs and centuries-old shrines reflecting Timbuktu’s Sufi model of Islam. However judges discovered that Al Hassan had no position within the destruction.
A timetable for his sentencing will likely be handed down quickly.
Wearing a yellow gown and white headdress Al Hassan sat impassively, along with his arms folded, all through the practically two-hour verdict.
Al Hassan was additionally concerned in interrogations the place torture was used to extract confessions, Mindua mentioned.
The choose specified by element the reign of terror below the militants in Timbuktu, together with girls being arrested after which raped in detention.
“The inhabitants had no different alternative however to adapt their lives and existence to evolve to the interpretation of Islamic sharia regulation … imposed on them by the power of arms,” mentioned Mindua.
Mindua described brutal floggings within the central sq. in entrance of crowds together with kids, in addition to a public amputation by machete.
Al Hassan was convicted of “contributing to the crimes perpetrated by different members” of the jihadist teams, together with mutilation and persecution.
Regardless of the acquittals the deputy prosecutor, Mame Mandiaye Niang, mentioned he was “happy with the decision, which proved the accused was responsible of a sure variety of prices”.
“I’m considering of the victims and I say once more within the identify of the prosecutor … that we’ll keep by their facet, research the decision fastidiously and that subsequent steps … will likely be so {that a} extra full justice is given to those victims,” he added.
Based between the fifth and twelfth centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu is called the “pearl of the desert” and “the town of 333 saints” for the variety of Muslim sages buried there throughout a golden age of Islam.
However jihadists who swept into the town thought-about the shrines idolatrous and destroyed them with pickaxes and bulldozers.
The militants from the Ansar Dine and Al-Qaida within the Islamic Maghreb teams exploited an ethnic Tuareg rebellion in 2012 to take over cities in Mali’s unstable north.
On Friday, the ICC made public an arrest warrant for one of many prime jihadist leaders within the African area of Sahel over alleged atrocities in Timbuktu from 2012 to 2013.
Iyad Ag Ghaly is taken into account to be the chief of the Al-Qaida-linked Group for the Assist of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), which operates in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Also referred to as Abou Fadl, Ag Ghaly is needed on suspicion of conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity allegedly dedicated in Timbuktu, the ICC mentioned.
These embody homicide, rape and sexual slavery, and assaults on buildings devoted as non secular and historic monuments.
Judges issued the warrant in opposition to Ag Ghaly in mid-2017, however the doc has been saved below wraps for the previous seven years due to “potential dangers to witnesses and victims”.
Supply hyperlink
