Judges at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday found Malian jihadists guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the terrorist group's nine-month occupation of the ancient city of Timbuktu.
The three-member committee said former police chief Al-Hassan Ag Abdul Aziz played a key role within the Islamist police in orchestrating a repressive regime aimed at imposing extreme Sharia law on traditional, more tolerant Islam in Timbuktu, its intellectual and cultural centre.
Presiding Judge Antoine Kesia Mbe Mindua said Al Hassan was “convicted by majority verdict of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, cruel treatment and outrages against personal dignity” by publicly flogging him.
Al-Hassan, 46, was also convicted of religious persecution and taking part in a false trial in an Islamic court.
Prosecutors had alleged that Hassan was complicit in crimes against women, who were raped and forced to marry jihadists as sex slaves, but the judges said several women had testified that they had been raped by members of the jihadi police while under arrest for allegedly dressing inappropriately or having extramarital sex, and others had been forced into marriage, but that Hassan was not involved in such incidents and was not criminally responsible.
Al-Hassan was also acquitted of charges that he was involved in the destruction of the shrine of a locally revered Islamic saint, whose worship the jihadists have called heretical.
His sentence is expected to be handed down soon, according to the court.
Al-Hassan has pleaded not guilty to all charges but has not denied being a member of Ansar Dine, a jihadist group aligned with AQIM, the al-Qaida affiliate operating in the Sahara.
Al-Hassan's four-year trial appeared to have been complicated for the court as the three judges each submitted separate dissenting opinions on different points. The presiding judge, who had been absent for six months for health reasons, voted against the guilty verdict on the main charges.
Wednesday's ruling came nearly a week after the Hague-based court unsealed an arrest warrant for Ansar Dine founder and leader Iyad Ag Ghali, also known as Abu Fadl, whose whereabouts are unknown.
El Hadji Zitterié, an analyst who was in Timbuktu during the occupation and later founded the Timbuktu Center for Strategic Studies in the Sahel, said most people in Malian life were unaware of the trial.
In contrast, Ag Ghali is one of Mali's most prominent jihadists, and any trial against him would be closely monitored, he said, which could dramatically change the currently widespread perception in the West African country that the International Criminal Court is irrelevant to Mali's current problems.
The jihadist occupation of Timbuktu was notorious at the time: the desert city had long been a Muslim pilgrimage site, known for its revered mosques and collection of ancient manuscripts. French and Malian forces seized it in early 2013, driving out the jihadists.
Veteran Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako subsequently depicted the hardships faced by local residents in his acclaimed 2014 film, “Timbuktu.”
In an earlier trial in 2016, the court sentenced another jihadist to nine years in prison after he showed remorse and pleaded guilty to ordering and participating in attacks on the holy sites of Timbuktu.
The damaged mausoleum was subsequently restored with foreign aid.
But many of the abuses against women and men cited in Al Hassan's trial are similar to practices that continue to take place in other parts of Mali and in neighbouring countries.
Groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State have intensified violence in the country and other parts of West Africa over the past decade, turning a large region south of the Sahara desert known as the Sahel into a centre of terrorist activity.
In 2012, jihadist groups like Ansar Dine controlled only parts of northern Mali. Now, extremists affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State have expanded into central and southern Mali, as well as areas of neighboring Niger and more than half of Burkina Faso.
Over the years, the groups have launched a series of attacks on villages, boats and convoys, killing tens of thousands of civilians and displacing millions, according to researchers who track the conflict and U.N. statistics.
“The jihadists have deep roots in the local landscape,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, deputy director of the Sahel project for the International Crisis Group, based in Dakar, Senegal. “That makes it very difficult to eradicate them,” he added.
The current conflict plaguing Mali began in 2012 when a loose alliance of Tuareg rebels and Islamist militants seized vast swathes of the country's north. The militants eventually took control of several towns and cities in the region, including Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.
French troops, who ousted Ansar Dine from Timbuktu, withdrew from Mali in 2022 after a decade-long mission that many experts considered a failure. The U.N. peacekeeping mission also withdrew from Mali late last year amid deteriorating relations with the country's Russia-allied military junta, which seized power in a 2020 coup.
The al-Qaeda affiliate to which Ansar Dine belongs has carried out attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, as well as other West African countries including Benin, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
Ruth MacLean Contributed report.