The nine year jail sentence handed down to a Malian Islamist accused of destroying historical and religious monuments in Timbuktu has been welcomed by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
“The decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a landmark in gaining recognition for the importance of heritage for humanity as a whole and for the communities that have preserved it over the centuries. It also supports UNESCO’s conviction that heritage has a major role to play in reconstruction and peace building,” Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director-General, said.
Earlier this week the ICC sentenced Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi, a member of a jihadist group licked to Al Qaeda, to nine years in prison for committing a war crime by deliberately destroying nine mausoleums and the secret gat of the Sisi Yahia mosque at the Timbuktu World Heritage Site in Mali.
The case, Bokova said, comes amid growing concern about attacks by Islamists on cultural and religious monuments in the Middle East and north Africa including the ancient cities of Bosra and Palmyra in Syria and Nimrud and Nineveh in Iraq.
The international cultural organisation called the ICC decision “historic” adding it was a first under the ICC’s founding Rome Statue and “a crucial step to end impunity for the destruction of cultural heritage”.
“It confirms earlier decisions taken by international jurisdictions and it amplifies them in a judgment entirely devoted to the destruction of cultural heritage. This is a major step for the strengthening of international justice and towards peace and reconciliation in Mali,” UNESCO said.
The agency also pointed out the case “reminds us all of how heritage protection has become a major security issue, which cannot be delinked from the protection of human lives”.
“Deliberate attacks on culture have become weapons of war in a global strategy of cultural cleansing seeking to destroy people as well as the monuments bearing their identities, institutions of knowledge and free thought,” UNESCO said.
“In the context of repeated violence against people and their heritage, this sentence of the International Criminal Court is a key element in the broader response to violent extremism.”
UNESCO said it took the judgment as an encouragement to continue the work engaged over the past few years to protect and rehabilitate heritage in Mali, in co-operation with the UN Multi-dimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), and to preserve cultural diversity and human rights as a “lasting foundation for peace, not only in Mali but also across the world.”
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