The International Criminal Court on Wednesday convicted an al Qaeda-linked extremist leader of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Mali, notably for abusing prisoners as the de facto chief of the Islamic police in the historic desert city of Timbuktu.
Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud sat stoically while the decision finding him guilty of torture and cruel treatment between 2012 and 2013 was read out.
Judges continued to read the verdict on the many other charges he faced for his alleged role in a reign of terror insurgents unleashed on Timbuktu, including rape, torture, persecution, enforced marriages and sexual slavery.
Presiding judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua said Al Hassan played a "key role" overseeing amputations and floggings as police chief when Islamic militants seized control of Timbuktu for almost a year from early 2012.
A timetable for his sentencing will be handed down soon.
Dressed in a yellow robe and white headdress, Al Hassan sat impassively throughout the nearly two-hour verdict with arms folded.
Prosecutors say he was a key member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al Qaeda that held power in northern Mali at the time.
Al Hassan was also involved in interrogations where torture was used to extract confessions, Mindua said.
Mindua laid out in detail the reign of terror under the militants in Timbuktu, including women being arrested then raped in detention.
"The inhabitants had no other choice but to adapt their lives and lifestyles to conform to the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law ... imposed on them by the force of arms," said Mindua.
Mindua described brutal floggings in the central square in front of crowds including children, as well as a public amputation by machete.
Women's rights abuses
Women and girls suffered in particular under Ansar Dine’s repressive regime, facing corporal punishment and imprisonment, the court's then-chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said at the start of Al Hassan's trial nearly four years ago.
“Many were forced into marriage,” Bensouda said. “Confined against their will and repeatedly raped by members of the armed group.” Al Hassan was involved in organising such marriages, the prosecutor told judges.
She cited one rape victim as saying, “All that was left of me was a corpse.”
Defence lawyer Melinda Taylor told judges that Al Hassan was a member of the Islamic police force who was “obliged to respect and execute the decisions of the Islamic tribunal. This is what the police around the world do.”
In Timbuktu, victims of Ansar Dine crimes were awaiting possible compensation.
“We are waiting and hoping for a judgment that will give us justice," said Yehia Hamma Cissé, president of a group of victims’ associations in the Timbuktu region.
“Members of our associations have been raped, had their hands cut off, been whipped, and we would like to be compensated," he said.
The court made a reparation order following the 2016 conviction of an Ansar Dine member, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi. He was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for attacking nine mausoleums and a mosque door in Timbuktu in 2012.
'Pearl of the desert'
Founded between the fifth and 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu is known as the "Pearl of the Desert" and "The City of 333 Saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there during a golden age of Islam.
But jihadists who swept into the city considered the shrines idolatrous and destroyed them with pickaxes and bulldozers.
The militants from the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Dine groups exploited an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to take over cities in Mali's volatile north.
On Friday, the ICC made public an arrest warrant for one of the Sahel's top jihadist leaders over alleged atrocities in Timbuktu from 2012 to 2013.
Iyad Ag Ghaly, is considered to be the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), which operates in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
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Also known as "Abou Fadl", Ag Ghaly is wanted on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Timbuktu, the ICC said.
These included murder, rape and sexual slavery, and attacks on buildings dedicated as religious and historic monuments.
Judges issued the warrant against Ag Ghaly in mid-2017, but the document has been kept under wraps for the past seven years because of "potential risks to witnesses and victims".
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)
