This content was published on August 22, 2016 10:05 AM Aug 22, 2016 - 10:05 
 
 The minaret of a clay mosque in Timbuktu, Mali (Keystone) 
 
 The trial of Ahmed Al Faqi Al Mahdi, known as Abu Tourab, is to open on Monday at the International Criminal Court (ICC). 
 
 This Ansar Dine militiaman was head of the Islamic morality brigade during the occupation of Timbuktu, northern Mali, from April 2012 to January 2013. He is accused of war crimes for the destruction of nine mausoleums in the “City of 333 Saints” and the entrance to the Sidi Yahia mosque. Al Mahdi has said he will plead guilty. 
 
 
 
 The ICC prosecutor has limited the charges to destruction of cultural property, giving the case symbolic significance. Marc-André Renold, director of the Art-Law Centre at the University of Geneva, talks to JusticeInfo about the importance of this trial. 
 
 JusticeInfo: Why do you think this trial is important? 
 
 Professor Marc-André Renold: It is the first case where the charge is intentional destruction of cultural property. There have been other cases where the charges included destruction of cultural heritage, notably attempts to destroy the old town of Dubrovnik in former Yugoslavia. The destruction of cultural heritage was taken into account in the trial but it was just one aspect among others, whereas it is at the heart of this trial. And it is not because we are focusing on something other than human lives than it is not important. I really think it goes together. And up to now these international trials have not focused on the destruction of cultural heritage. 
 
 JusticeInfo: UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has called the destruction of cultural heritage “cultural genocide”. What do you think about that? 
 
 MAR: It is a strong term which reflects the importance of the link between the material and immaterial aspects of things and of cultural property. For a long time, we talked mainly about the material aspect. I am thinking, for example, about the destruction of monuments and theft of artworks during the Second World War. But more recently UNESCO and others have become interested in the immaterial aspect of cultural heritage and I think it has basically become very important. There is the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. But what we are seeing with these destructions is that they target the immaterial aspect, relating to religion, history and tradition. And the term “cultural genocide” shows we can not only destroy the physical property but also the culture, wipe out the enemy through all that his culture may represent. 
 
 
 
 UNESCO recently initiated a new debate: Should we, or should we not invoke the Responsibility to Protect in the cultural domain? It is a new idea which came up some ten years ago and which is linked notably to the prevention of genocide. It aims to provide that the State in which such acts occur and the international community can intervene to prevent the threat of genocide. So we asked ourselves “Isn’t the destruction of cultural heritage a preparatory act for genocide which could justify intervention?” We realize that these attacks on culture can perhaps be warning signs that we should study more closely. 
 
 JusticeInfo: According to the Prosecution, the monuments were destroyed after deliberation by the Islamic tribunal set up during the occupation of Timbuktu from April 2012 to January 2013. Don’t you think that here we have two different concepts of law, two different visions of the world? 
 
 MAR: There are often different visions in conflict. But what we should note is a desire in the international community today to protect cultural heritage as part of the fundamental values of a society. There is respect for it which is due and which is recognized, including in Mali and Syria. These Conventions can be used more or less universally. We are nevertheless talking about basic rules of international society, and even if we disagree with them, that cannot justify destruction. 
 
 JusticeInfo: Who are the victims of destruction of cultural heritage? 
 
 MAR: It is first and foremost the local community, the people who can no longer enjoy this cultural heritage to perform traditional and religious acts. It is clearly also the international community, but I think it is important not to forget that these places are important for the local community. We see this in the way local communities react to protect them. We know what Malians did to protect the manuscripts [during occupation of Timbuktu by Jihadist groups nearly 400,000 manuscripts were discreetly evacuated by the inhabitants to keep them safe]. It wasn’t the international community that acted, it arrived too late. We also remember the human chain that formed around the museum in Cairo in early 2011, when people thought it would be attacked. Whether it is Timbuktu or elsewhere, local communities are steeped in this heritage. It is a very important aspect which shows culture is not just something the big Western powers think is important but also the people in the places concerned. Of course, this is the International Criminal Court, it is a certain vision of justice, but I think attacks on cultural heritage are attacks that hurt local communities a lot. And when it comes to reconstruction, culture, religion, music and art can help reconciliation. 
 
 JusticeInfo: We have seen recently in Iraq and Syria that cultural heritage is also the target of looting. Do we have a way to stop this? 
 
 MAR: Yes, cultural property can be not only destroyed but also used to fund terrorism. With regard to Syria and Iraq, there are UN Security Council Resolutions that affirm that. Rules have been adopted by many countries, art market countries like France, the UK, US and Switzerland. The Hague Convention of 1954, which is often referred to for basic rules on the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflicts, has a Protocol which provides that States should commit to conserving and returning after the conflict objects that are at risk of looting. There are also what we call “safe havens” for cultural wealth. Some States have adopted legislation that allows this. Switzerland is the first country to have done so. There is a “haven” in the German speaking part of Switzerland. It is a former munitions depot which is now designated to take in cultural objects if this should be necessary. Nevertheless, it is a very complicated issue. Wouldn’t it be a form of neo-colonialism to say to a Syrian “you can’t protect your cultural heritage so we will do it”? It is also very costly, but the aim is precisely to avoid looting. There is a little precedent, which is very interesting. Near Basel some individuals set up a museum for endangered Afghan cultural property. It existed for about ten years. More than a museum, it was a kind of sanctuary, and when the situation improved in Afghanistan all the contents were returned to Kabul museum under the auspices of UNESCO. 
 
 JusticeInfo: Do you think protection of cultural property can help peace? 
 
 MAR: It allows everyone to speak more or less the same language. Cultural heritage should bring people together rather than tearing them apart. In a conflict-affected society, cultural heritage can help reconciliation, I am absolutely convinced of that. Cultural heritage carries a very strong symbolic value. 
 
 This article was first publishedexternal link by JusticeInfo.net on August 19, 2016. 
 
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 subscription form Form for signing up for free newsletter. Sign up for our free newsletter and get the top stories delivered to your inbox. ||||| An Islamic extremist accused of destroying religious monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu will be tried for war crimes in a groundbreaking case at the international criminal court this week. 
 
 Ahmad al-Mahdi, a former junior civil servant in Mali’s department of education, joins the ranks of the world’s most notorious dictators and warlords in being tried by the ICC. His alleged crimes, however, are not those usually dealt with by The Hague’s prosecutors: the destruction of small mausoleums made from mud in the middle of the desert. 
 
 Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts Read more 
 
 Mahdi’s lawyer has said his client will plead guilty to directing the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque when the trial starts on Monday; it would be the first time an ICC defendant accused of war crimes has entered a guilty plea. 
 
 Mahdi’s trial is the ICC’s first for destroying cultural heritage, something that its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has called “a callous assault on the dignity and identity of entire populations, and their religious and historical roots”. 
 
 Timbuktu is slowly turning to dust, but was once known as the city of gold for its great wealth. Despite being a byword for the end of the earth, the city was a centre of learning, knowledge and culture on par with Florence during the Italian renaissance. Its university had 25,000 students, more than Timbuktu’s estimated current population of less than 15,000, and its libraries held hundreds of thousands of precious manuscripts from the 12th-16th centuries. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Islamist militants destroying an ancient shrine in Timbuktu. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 In 2012, Tuareg rebels attacked Timbuktu, backed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and armed with weapons from Libya. They enforced sharia law, banning music – the lifeblood of Malian culture – forcing women to wear the burqa and preventing girls from attending school. 
 
 Mahdi, who is from a village 62 miles (100km) outside Timbuktu, is accused of having joined the jihadis, who were trying to hire locals to build their credibility, and leading the vice squad. 
 
 He was no stranger to Timbuktu. Mahdi met his wife, got married and trained as a teacher in the city. According to magazine Jeune Afrique, a former colleague remembers him as quiet and polite, but that, as a Wahhabi, he refused to look into her eyes or shake hands with any woman. 
 
 His alleged orders were to attack the shrines of Sufi saints, break down a mosque door that locals believed had to stay shut until the end of the world, and burn priceless manuscripts from Timbuktu’s archive. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest UN peacekeepers guard the mausoleum of Alpha Moya in Timbuktu. Photograph: Sebastien Rieussec/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Mohamed Aouini, Mahdi’s defence lawyer, said his client would plead guilty to the crimes. “He wants to be truthful to himself and he wants to admit the acts that he has committed. And he wants to ask at the same time for pardon from the people of Timbuktu and the Malian people,” Aouini told an earlier hearing at the ICC. “He regrets all the actions that he has committed.” 
 
 Thanks to Abdel Kader Haidara, a collector and librarian, 95% of the city’s 400,000 manuscripts were secretly smuggled to Bamako, the Malian capital, by boat and car. They are now being painstakingly restored, catalogued and digitalised. Of what was left in Timbuktu, about 4,000 were lost, stolen or burned by the jihadis before they fled in 2013 when French and Malian troops advanced on the city. 
 
 A peace agreement was signed in Mali last year, but fighting has continued, particularly in the lawless north, where jihadis and bandits thrive. The UN mission there is the deadliest in the world. 
 
 Haidara had spent a decade travelling the region by camel and canoe, buying manuscripts from families: his story is documented in a book by Joshua Hammer. He took a particular interest in manuscripts that showed Islam not as a religion of intolerance, but of humanity and moderation. 
 
 Destruction of Timbuktu manuscripts is an offence against the whole of Africa | Jonathan Jones Read more 
 
 This was a key part of Timbuktu’s “extraordinary civilisation”, according to Cynthia Schneider, a scholar of relations with the Islamic world and a former US ambassador. 
 
 “The great characteristic of Timbuktu, which is why it’s so important today, was tolerance, plurality and diversity,” she said. “It was a centre of learning, but also, importantly, a centre of inquiry. 
 
 “The manuscripts include discussions of human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, good governance, good business practices. And there’s a whole lot of scientific ones, philosophy, literature, music. All of these characteristics that we tend to associate with Western civilisation – all of that was going on in Timbuktu.” 
 
 Schneider co-directs Timbuktu Renaissance, a project that aims to foster peace, unity and economic redevelopment in the city, where the economy has crumbled since its main income, tourism, abruptly dried up in 2012. 
 
 The tombs of the Sufi saints, who are thought to protect the city against evil spirits, were rebuilt with the help of Unesco. 
 
 In a country where people have, in the recent past, been summarily executed, raped and had their hands amputated, some question the significance of what some Malians call the “trial of stones and earth”. However, the destruction of shrines and monuments has become a hallmark of Islamic extremism, with many statues, mosques, churches and tombs being attacked in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
 
 
 Irina Bokova, the director general of Unesco, said attacks such as these were “a mark of a genocidal project” as they amounted to the attempted annihilation of the other. “I hope that the trial will have a tremendous deterrent effect – a deterrent to Isis and others,” Schneider said, adding that it was important for the people of Timbuktu that Mahdi had admitted to his crimes. 
 
 Although not particularly architecturally beautiful, the small mud shrines are key to the identity of Timbuktu, Schneider said, recalling what the city’s imam told her after the attacks. “When they destroyed our tombs, they destroyed our souls,” he said. ||||| Should acts of cultural destruction that happen during conflict be classed as war crimes? That is the precedent being set by the current trial of Ahmad al-Mahdi at the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague. Al-Mahdi has pleaded guilty to leading a group that destroyed most of the architecturally beautiful, historically precious mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali, when it was under Islamist rule in 2012. 
 
 It may seem a clear-cut case, a one-sided argument. Attacks on art and architecture have become a terrifyingly routine weapon in the hands of religious extremists. It is so easy to blow up a temple, to smash a statue. And these assaults on “idolatry” – as the extremists brand them – are not just upsetting for archaeologists. From the blowing up of Afghan Buddhas that eerily preceded the attack on the World Trade Center to the horrible confluence of vandalism and cruelty in Palmyra, it is clear that for those who psych themselves up to destroy great art, it is just a short step to killing people. 
 
 Islamist pleads guilty at ICC to destroying Timbuktu mausoleums Read more 
 
 Yet the two are not the same. The most precious work of art in the world is still worth less than a single human life. War crime as a category must be kept distinct. It needs to be highly specific. The destruction of art is vile and offensive to many – but it is not mass murder and we should not pretend it is the same, nor that it belongs in the same court. There is potential for absurdity and moral confusion if artistic vandalism becomes a matter for The Hague. 
 
 That’s in part because art is being destroyed all the time, sometimes by neglect, sometimes by ignorance, sometimes even by misplaced love. Some art experts believe that restorations of such cultural glories as the Sistine Chapel and The Last Supper were done so badly that they damaged what they claimed to save. Should those culprits be brought before the ICC? The decay of Pompeii is becoming so scandalous that people might press for a case there too. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Malian jihadists attack the Unesco world heritage site in Timbuktu in 2012. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Culture can be renewed, remade, reinvented. Human life cannot 
 
 In war, both sides destroy art, usually as collateral damage. In the second world war, the French city of Caen was virtually obliterated by allied bombing, its precious medieval heritage devastated. Allied bombs also destroyed Benozzo Gozzoli’s famous frescoes in the Campo Santo in Pisa. Caravaggio paintings were lost in the bombing of Berlin. The abbey of Monte Cassino was used as a battleground and pulverised in the process. Were the pilots and generals responsible for these terrible attacks prosecuted for war crimes in 1945? 
 
 Of course not. The trials at Nuremberg had a far more pressing task – to get the full measure of the Nazi Holocaust and prosecute those responsible for the worst genocide in history. Today’s concept of war crime, with genocide its ultimate horror, flows from the sheer scale of Nazi mass murder and the need to ensure nothing like it ever happens again. It would have been monstrous to classify the cultural destruction of the second world war, the worst of which was often caused by British and American bombs, in a similar moral sphere to Nazi crimes against humanity. 
 
 Palmyra must not be fixed. History would never forgive us Read more 
 
 It would have been equally misplaced for the court at Nuremberg to treat the destruction of Jewish culture in eastern Europe as equal to the mass extermination of millions of Jewish lives. The Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich in 1937, at which the Nazis mocked and vilified modern works, was an insight into their ideology, but a footnote compared with the horror of Auschwitz. 
 
 Culture can be renewed, remade, reinvented. Human life cannot. The organised torture and murder of human beings is what war crime should always, and unmistakably, mean. So while we mourn the loss of art or cultural artefacts, we need to keep a moral perspective in which the true crimes of war can be seen for what they are, and eradicated from the world. ||||| Ahmad al-Mahdi faces up to 11 years in jail after becoming first international criminal court defendant to enter a guilty plea 
 
 The first defendant to plead guilty at the international criminal court has apologised to Mali and to mankind for destroying religious monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu. 
 
 
 
 Ahmad al-Mahdi admitted directing the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque door in 2012, when Timbuktu was controlled by rebels and members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. 
 
 At the opening of his trial for war crimes in The Hague, he expressed his “deep regret” to the people of Timbuktu, to whom the monuments had been of great religious and cultural importance. 
 
 “I seek their forgiveness and I ask them to look at me as a son who has lost his way,” he said. “Those who forgive me will be rewarded by the almighty. I would like to make them a solemn promise that this was the first and the last wrongful act I will ever commit.” 
 
 Wearing a grey suit, blue shirt and tie and glasses, his long curly hair slicked back, Mahdi said he drew on Islamic teachings to enter his guilty plea. “We need to speak justice even to ourselves. We have to be truthful, even if it burns our own hands,” he said. 
 
 “All the charges brought against me are accurate and correct. I am really sorry, and I regret all the damage that my actions have caused.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A screengrab of video footage showing militants destroying one of the mausoleums in Timbuktu in 2012. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Timbuktu, which was once a city of great learning on par with Florence during the Italian renaissance, was overrun in 2012 by rebels backed by al-Qaida and carrying Libyan weapons. They imposed sharia law, banned music and whipped people who did not adhere to their code. 
 
 Mahdi was recruited to head the notorious vice squad, which destroyed structures that looked like simple mud huts but were tombs that were the “embodiment of Malian history captured in tangible form from an era long gone,” said Fatou Bensouda, thecourt’s chief prosecutor. 
 
 Mahdi, 40, a former civil servant from the Timbuktu area, directed the destruction of shrines to some of the 333 saints that the city is known for. In some cases he wielded the pickaxe himself. 
 
 “He was fully aware of the importance of the mausoleums, and he showed determination and focus in his supervision of operations,” Bensouda said. 
 
 Videos shown in court revealed men pushing, kicking and hacking at the mud and stone walls of the tombs, reducing them to piles of rubble. One of the piles was topped by a twisted wooden bedstead that had been inside the tomb. 
 
 Another of the monuments Mahdi admitted to destroying was a mosque door that had not been opened for hundreds of years and which people believed would stay closed until the end of the world. 
 
 His Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, wearing a white turban and robe, Mahdi and his fellow extremists ripped down the wooden door, revealing the bricks behind. 
 
 “We’re in charge of fighting superstitions, and that’s why we have decided to pull down this door,” Mahdi said in a 2012 video that was shown to the court. “We must eliminate from the landscape everything that doesn’t belong,” he said in another. 
 
 Despite repeatedly justifying his actions on video, Mahdi told the court that he had been acting under the “evil wave” of the extremists of al-Qaida and Ansar Dine. “I hope the years I will spend in prison will enable me to purge the evil spirits that overtook me,” he said. 
 
 Mahdi said he would accept the will of the court “with pain and with a broken heart”, but said he was “pinning my hope on the fact that the punishment meted out to me will be sufficient for the people of Timbuktu and Mali to offer forgiveness, for mankind to offer forgiveness.” 
 
 Mahdi is the first person to be tried by the ICC for destroying cultural heritage, something its chief prosecutor said was increasingly under threat from extremist groups, including Isis. 
 
 “Our cultural heritage is not a luxury good – we must protect it from desecration and ravages,” Bensouda told the court. “This must be stopped in its tracks. History will not be generous to our failure to care.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest UN peacekeepers guard the mausoleum of Alpha Moya in Timbuktu. Photograph: Sebastien Rieussec/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Some experts believe the trial could set a precedent for other countries to prosecute crimes of the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq, where the ICC does not have jurisdiction. 
 
 The maximum sentence for such a crime is 30 years in jail, but Mahdi has struck an agreement with the prosecutor’s office for a sentence of nine to 11 years. 
 
 In court, Mahdi did not renounce his formerly held belief, based on Islamic teachings, that tombs should not be higher than one inch above ground. 
 
 “As soon as you have the opportunity, you will do the same thing again,” one of the lawyers for the prosecution challenged him. 
 
 “I acted because I believed one is not allowed to build upon tombs,” Mahdi replied, adding: “But from a legal and political viewpoint, one should not cause damage that is more severe than the usefulness of the action.” 
 
 The ICC has come in for criticism for pursuing a “trial of stones and earth”, when there has been no trial for the many people who have suffered in Mali. 
 
 “While this case breaks new ground for the ICC, we must not lose sight of the need to ensure accountability for other crimes under international law, including murder, rape and torture of civilians that have been committed in Mali since 2012,” said Erica Bussey, of Amnesty International. 
 
 However, Bensouda said the trial would support reconciliation in the “ancient and vibrant city” and serve as a deterrent. “It brings truth and catharsis. It is crucial for Timbuktu’s victims,” she said.
– When Islamic rebels backed by al-Qaeda infiltrated Timbuktu in 2012, they wreaked havoc in the Malian city and destroyed Muslim shrines, including nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque that had remained shut for hundreds of years, per the Guardian. Now Ahmad al-Mahdi, a former employee with Mali's education department, is facing war crimes charges at the Hague for directing this cultural decimation, pleading guilty Monday at the international criminal court—the ICC's first prosecution of such a case, the New York Times reports. "All the charges brought against me are accurate and correct. I am really sorry," al-Mahdi told the court, noting his following of Islam led him to repent. "We have to be truthful, even if it burns our own hands." And the lead prosecutor says al-Mahdi used his own hands during the rampage, showing "determination and focus" to turn the revered structures to rubble. "We must eliminate from the landscape everything that doesn't belong," al-Mahdi, believed to be around 40, said in a 2012 video shown in court. Although he could have faced up to 30 years in prison, al-Mahdi struck a deal that will likely net him just nine to 11 years behind bars. Although al-Madhi was suspected of other crimes, too, the ICC prosecutor purposely limited charges to the cultural destruction as a symbolic move, per Swissinfo.ch. Some experts say the case could spur the prosecution of other culturally related war crimes in countries like Iraq and Syria, which the ICC doesn't have reach over. 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. (A dissenting opinion in the Guardian.)