ICC Convicts Al Qaeda-Linked Extremist Leader for War Crimes in Mali

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has convicted an al Qaeda-linked extremist leader of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Timbuktu, Mali, specifically for abusing prisoners as the de facto chief of the Islamic police in the city between 2012 and 2013.

On June 26, the court accused Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 47, of torturing prisoners and overseeing amputations and floggings. He was an Islamist leader of Ansar Dine, an extremist group associated with al-Qaida, and former commissioner of the Islamic police in Timbuktu when the city and northern Mali were under militant control.

“The inhabitants had no other choice than to adapt their lives and lifestyle to the version of Sharia law imposed on them by Ansar Dine,” said Presiding Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, stating how Al Hassan played a major role in meting out punishment.

The trial began on July 14, 2020, with opening statements from the prosecution, which had previously asserted in 2019 that Al Hassan played a key role in the «ordeal» suffered by the people of Timbuktu under jihadist control. Al Hassan could face up to life imprisonment when his sentence is handed down at a later date.

Born in 1977, Al Hassan, a former veterinary pharmacist, was the commissioner of the Islamic police in Timbuktu when Al-Qaeda dominated the city in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its Tuareg branch, Ansar Dine. According to the prosecution, he committed war crimes and crimes against humanity between April 1, 2012, and January 28, 2013.

According to the ICC, Al Hassan had about 40 Islamic police officers under his command. Any violations of their strict interpretation of Islamic laws were punished. He personally carried out arrests and conducted investigations, during which suspects were tortured and flogged.

“It was the women and girls of Timbuktu who were most targeted and who suffered the most,” said ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the opening of the trial in 2020. More than a dozen charges have been brought against him, including torture, rape, sexual slavery, forced marriages, persecution, and the destruction of religious buildings and protected historical monuments.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Al Hassan on March 27, 2018. He was handed over to the Court by Malian authorities four days later. The charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity were confirmed in 2019 by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber, leading to the official start of the trial.

Al Hassan is not the only jihadist tried by the ICC for crimes committed during the war in Mali. In 2016, the court sentenced Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, also known as Abou Tourab, former head of Ansar Dine’s morality brigade in Timbuktu, to nine years in prison for destroying historical mausoleums, among other crimes.