Mali’s al-Qaida-linked Islamist leader convicted by ICC for war crimes in Timbuktu

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday (26 June) convicted an al-Qaida-linked jihadist who was accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during Islamist militants’ one-year rule over Mali’s Timbuktu in 2012.

Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud was found guilty of playing a key role in a reign of terror unleashed by insurgents on the historic desert city in northern Mali, once dubbed the “Pearl of the Desert”.

In 2012, a coalition of Islamic extremists occupied the ancient city of Timbuktu in the Saharan desert. They imposed a brutal regime, murdering and raping those they considered to be non-believers and destroying centuries-old holy sites that they saw as blasphemous.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague accuse Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, who was arrested in 2018, of being one of those extremists and even a leading figure among them. They say he was a key member of Ansar Dine (“Defenders of the Faith”), a militant group that ruled northern Mali between April 2012 and January 2013.

He will be sentenced at a later date, but for the crimes he is convicted of he could be awarded life imprisonment. The charges brought against him by the ICC, which started the Timbuktu war crimes trial on Tuesday, included torture, persecution, rape, enforced marriages, and sexual slavery — with his crimes against women particularly marked — as well as destroying religious and historic buildings, and brutally imposing bans on music, dance, art and sport.

Prosecutors say Al Hassan was a key member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida that took over Timbuktu in early 2012 and held it for almost a year. The former Islamist leader is also accused of personally overseeing floggings and amputations, including cutting peoples’ hands off for petty thefts, while he served as de facto chief of the Islamic police during Ansar Dine’s reign over Timbuktu.

At the beginning of his trial, the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court: “Today marks the beginning of the long-awaited trial of the unimaginable crimes which have been committed in Mali.”

“Al Hassan was directly involved in the violence and torture inflicted on the men, the women and the children of Timbuktu. He worked in the heart of a repressive, persecuting system,” she said.

Al Hassan is the second Islamist to go on trial in The Hague in relation to war crimes connected with Timbuktu. In 2016, the ICC sentenced former Ansar Dine leader Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi to nine years’ imprisonment after he admitted to destroying historic shrines in the city.
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant against the leader of Ansar Eddine, terrorist Iyad Ag Ghaly and urged states to cooperate to bring him before justice, in a clear allusion to Algeria.

Ghaly is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Mali.

A Tuareg descendant of the Ifoghah tribe, Ag Ghaly was notorious for leading Ansar Eddine, which once had control of Timbuktu, jointly with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Mali had previously openly accused Algeria of acting in connivance with Tuareg extremists such as Iyad Ag Ghali.