The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz, an extremist leader of an al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Din armed group, to 10 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Mali.
Al Hassan was convicted in June on charges including torture, rape and sexual slavery, as well as destroying religious and historic buildings, whereby he was blamed for carrying out these crimes during the 2012-13 period while heading the Islamic police in the historic desert city of Timbuktu in the West African country. Among the crimes the 47-year-old committed back then were “cruel treatment as a war crime” for flogging one person, “mutilation” for amputating a hand, and “torture as a crime against humanity and a war crime”. The people of Timbuktu “lived in an atmosphere of fear, violence, oppression, [and] humiliation” and that period “remains present in the minds of victims in a deep-seated trauma”, presiding Judge Kimberly Prost said.
Prost described the sentence as “proportionate to the gravity of the crimes,” acknowledging the harm caused to the victims. To the disappointment of many human rights groups, the ex-Ansar a-Din leader, who denies guilt, was, however, acquitted of the war crimes of rape and sexual slavery, the crime against humanity of forced marriage and as well as the destruction of Timbuktu’s ancient mausoleums. Both sides have appealed the ICC’s ruling. Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for over a decade battled an insurgency fought by numerous armed groups.