As Islamist militant Al-Mahdi admits Timbuktu destruction, why criminalising cultural atrocities will save lives

Destruction carried out by the Islamists in Timbuktu would have been much greater had people of the city not rallied around to save their history

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, center, appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands (AP)

Ahmad al-Farqi al-Mahdi pleaded guilty at the International Criminal Court in the Hague on Monday to destroying historic cultural sites in Mali.

Dressed in a grey suit, blue and white striped shirt and matching tie, his long hair neatly combed, eyes blinking behind metal-framed glasses, the 40-year-old schoolteacher said he was “really sorry” for what he had done.

There was a different image of Al-Mahdi four years ago in Timbuktu, during a period of vicious Islamist occupation. An angry and spiteful figure in a black jalabiya, with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, he led fighters of Ansar Dine, an al-Qaeda affiliate, as they destroyed 14 of the 16 mausoleums, Unesco heritage sites, in the ancient city which had once been a centre of learning, attracting scholars from across the region.

Elsewhere in the short-lived "caliphate", priceless manuscripts were burned and statues destroyed in the name of Islam, alongside the introduction of a savage regime of floggings, rape, amputations and executions.

The International Federation for Human Rights said it deeply regretted that Al-Mahdi was not facing other charges. They have catalogued evidence against him and 14 others, they said, on behalf of 33 victims for crimes including rape and sexual slavery.

Al-Mahdi faces a maximum of 30 years' imprisonment. But, his guilty plea means it is likely he will receive a sentence of no more than a third of that.

“I regret all the damage my action has caused” he said.

“I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world, not to get involved in the same acts as I was involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity.”

But other Islamists have been involved in the same acts as the Malian, and his landmark trial may be followed by others. Al-Mahdi is the first defendant to appear in the Hague on a charge of cultural destruction, and officials say the International Criminal Court ( ICC) is exploring how Isis members who destroyed antiquities in Syria and Iraq and Islamists who carried out similar acts in Libya could also face justice.

Syria is not a member of the ICC, but the United Nations Security Council can ask the court to investigate nevertheless.

After Isis tore down the temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, originally built in 17AD, Irina Bokova, the head of Unesco, declared “ this destruction is a new war crime, an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity. Daesh [Isis] is killing people and destroying sites, but we cannot allow it to silence history.”

After Al-Mahdi was charged, Karima Bennoune, the UN special rapporteur for cultural rights, stressed: “Clearly we must understand that when cultural heritage is under attack, it is also the people and their fundamental human rights that are under attack. When mausoleums, as well as ancient Islamic manuscripts, were being destroyed in Mali various forms of other religious and cultural practices were also under attack.”

Criminalising cultural atrocities, she held, will save lives. Speaking of the torture and murder by Isis of the Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, the chief of antiquities in Palmyra, Ms Bennoune stressed “we must not wait to rally to the cause of the defenders of cultural heritage at risk until we are mourning their deaths”.

The need was to protect historic sites but also those “ordinary people who step forward to defend culture like those in Mali who reportedly hid manuscripts beneath the floorboards of their homes, and those in Libya who tried to peacefully protest [against] the destruction of Sufi sites.”

The destruction carried out by Islamists in Timbuktu would have been much greater had the people of the city not taken manuscripts and artefacts from the museums and educational institutions at night, hiding them in their homes.

Some of those who had taken part told me at the time how they had outwitted the book-burners, spiriting away the treasures while the Salafists were sleeping or praying, leaving empty folders to disguise what they had done.

Dramane Maulvi Haidara was one of them. “Can you imagine how terrible it would have been if they had burned this?” he asked, holding up a book of Hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet Mohamed, pages of exquisite calligraphy between frayed covers of Moroccan leather written in the 14th century.

The rubble left from an ancient mausoleum destroyed by Islamist militants, is seen in Timbuktu, Mali (Reuters)

The book had been rescued from a college, the Ahmed Baba Institute, where the Islamists had thrown other works onto a bonfire.

Also of immense value from the Institute was a Quran from the 1600s, when the city became renowned for its book trade, while the Sankore Madrassa, an Islamic college, became a centre of religious discourse.

“These are works of Islam, but that wouldn’t have stopped them, as you know they burned holy books, they considered everything that did not meet their view of religion as things to be destroyed”, said Mr Haidara.

Other manuscripts produced by Mr Haidara were on astronomy and algebra, poetry and horticulture.

“The Salafists don’t like these subjects because, they say, they are not in the Quran”, he said. “But this is not just our history, but of other people, some of them have been translated from other languages, some went to Asia, to Europe. We have saved these books, but the tombs we could not save, that is something we really regret”.

Al-Mahdi and his followers had been thorough in their vandalism, using sledgehammers to smash the mausoleums into tiny bits. Abou Dardar, one of Mahdi’s fellow Salafists, had admonished a watching crowd “do not mourn what is happening, that is forbidden. You are not allowed to worship saints, Allah does not like it. These will not be allowed to exist again.”

Some of the mausoleums have, in fact, been rebuilt. A consecration ceremony, the first of its kind since the 11th Century in Timbuktu, was held for them eight months ago, the occasion marked with a cattle sacrifice and readings from the Quran. But they were, a local imam pointed out, remakes necessarily using modern material.

“You cannot really replace something from history, something so precious,” he said.

The manuscripts were smuggled out of Timbuktu to the capital, Bamako – Mr Haidara’s brother one of those organising the transport – to be returned after the city was liberated from the Islamists. But this is yet to happen four years after French forces had intervened to drive out al-Qaeda and its allies.

Instead the collection remains, once again hidden, in Bamako. The jihadists are now carrying out attacks in the capital, and there are fears they may try to finish off the cultural destruction they started in Timbuktu. But they are not the only threat: criminality is rising as Mali’s economy continues to falter, and the manuscripts would be highly lucrative loot for gangs selling on the the black market for vast profit.

I came across some of the manuscripts I had last seen in Timbuktu while in Bamako earlier this year to cover an attack on a hotel, the Radisson Blu, which killed 20 people.

The largest batch, of 27,000 books, was at a two-storey house where the Ahmed Baba Institute had rebased from Timbuktu. Despite the obvious care and attention of those in charge, the conditions were far from ideal and many of the documents – some analysts estimate up to 40 per cent of them – have been damaged.

Initially this was caused by rainwater seeping through a leaking roof. Although this was repaired, dust and heat began to damage the writing, pages got stuck together due to humidity and insects ate through the bindings.

"I am afraid a lot of the manuscripts have been affected, it is a great pity," said Dr Abdoulkadri Idrissa Maiga, director of the Institute.

"The weather conditions here in Bamako are not good for keeping them. It's a big problem. Even the dust here is not the same as the dust in Timbuktu and believe it or not, the type of dust has a bearing on how the pages can be preserved.”

But the manuscripts cannot yet be returned to Timbuktu. Security has unravelled in much of the country, al-Qaeda is back, half a dozen other armed groups control swathes of territory. Drissa Traore, head of the filing department, had returned to the city once. “The terrorists are in all the surrounding areas, there is no way we can take these books back until the situation really improves. We don’t know when that will be.

"People fear that these terrorists will always return. Some of the terrorists who were captured were freed after they promised they have reformed. But they are back with the gangs again. They will never change, they have evil in their hearts.”