Militant sent to ICC for Timbuktu attacks

The government of Niger has handed a rebel accused of attacking religious monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu over to the global Criminal Court (ICC).

Suspect Ahmad Al Mahdi Al Faqi was sent to a detention center in The Hague on Saturday.

The authorities of Mali’s neighboring country, Niger, transferred Mr. Faqi into the global court’s custody on Saturday, the court said.

Faqi was a leader of Ansar Dine, a group linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and one of the groups that briefly took control of Mali’s vast arid north in 2012.

“This is the first case to be brought before the ICC concerning the destruction of buildings dedicated to religion and historical monuments”, ICC said in a statement. No date was immediately set for his arraignment.

“The people of Mali deserve justice for the attacks against their cities, their beliefs and their communities”, the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Nesouda, said in a statement.

In June 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 16 of the northern city’s mausoleums, dating back to its golden age as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The case, the first ever war-crimes prosecution in The Hague for acts of cultural destruction, could set a precedent for further arrests for similar attacks on historic buildings in places such as Palmyra, the ancient site in Syria where temples and tombs have been blown up by Islamic State extremists in recent weeks.

At least two of those, the mausoleum Sheikh Sidi Ahmed Ben Amar Arragadi and Sidi Yahia mosque, were UNESCO World Heritage sites. The city once hosted almost 200 schools and universities that received thousands of students from all over the Muslim world, BBC reported.

He is alleged to have been involved with the so-called Islamic Court of Timbuktu during the city’s occupation, participating in executing the court’s decision. The court has evidence that “establish reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Al Faqi is criminally responsible for having committed, individually and jointly with others, facilitated or otherwise contributed to the commission of war crimes”.

Prosecutors opened an investigation in 2013 with Al Faq, born about 100km west of Timbuktu, became the first suspect arrested, according to The Globe and Mail.