Timbuktu mausoleum destruction suspect set to plead guilty

“I plead guilty”, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said, becoming the first person to confess to the International Criminal Court, admitting the solo war crimes charge of cultural destruction.

A former Malian rebel leader has pleaded guilty at the International Criminal Court to destroying priceless monuments in Timbuktu in 2012.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, the site also known as the “Pearl of the Desert” was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.

For the people of Timbuktu, freed from Islamist occupation by French troops in 2013, Mahdi’s trial is “a vindication of the importance of their culture and the place these shrines hold … as symbols of the culture”, says Cynthia Schneider, co-director of the Timbuktu Renaissance initiative.

Waves of unrest had led to a military coup in March that year and an all-out rebellion in the country’s north, led by Tuareg groups who were soon sidelined by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists, including the Ansar Dine group.

The case also marks the first time an ICC defendant has pleaded guilty. War crime as a category must be kept distinct.

“Al Mahdi, who was handed over to the ICC by Niger late past year, said he entered his guilty plea “with deep regret and great pain” and asked Malians in Timbuktu for their forgiveness”. During this time, Mahdi was allegedly a member of Ansar Eddine, a Tuareg movement with ties to the terrorist organization. The one-room structures that house the tombs of the city’s great thinkers were on the World Heritage list.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday the trial “draws our attention to an increasingly worrying trend of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in situations of armed conflict”.

According to Situ Research, the interdisciplinary approach to this project represents an emerging strategy in the application of global criminal law.

Worse, he says, such attacks “should be seen as a signal of serious persecution to follow”, since they are often “precursors to crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing”. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years.

But even without a formal trial, the case, in which the hearings were broadcast by court video, was expected to attract wide interest.

“They were also more generally a part of the heritage of Mali, of Africa and of the world”. Timbuktu was founded in the 5th century.

Al-Mahdi promised in court he wouldn’t commit such a transgression ever again, asked Timbuktu residents to forgive him “as a son who has lost his way”, and said he hoped the “evil spirits” that took him over will be purged in prison, per the Guardian.