Ahmad al-Mahdi

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi (also known as Abu Tourab) was a member of Ansar Dine, a Tuareg Islamist militia in North Africa. Al-Mahdi pleaded guilty in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2016 for the war crime of attacking religious and historical buildings in the Malian city of Timbuktu. Al-Mahdi was the first person convicted by the ICC for such a crime. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Al-Mahdi was born in Agoune, Mali, which is 97 km west of Timbuktu. He is an ethnic Tuareg and during the Northern Mali conflict, that began in 2012, he was a member of Ansar Dine. Al-Mahdi worked closely with the leaders of Ansar Dine and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, when the two groups controlled Timbuktu. Specifically, he enforced decisions of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu and from May to September 2012, he ran the "Manners' Brigade".

The ICC opened a formal investigation on Mali on 16 January 2013 to investigate alleged crimes, that occurred since January 2012 in the context of an armed conflict in the north of the country. The court issued an arrest warrant for al-Mahdi on 18 September 2015. The arrest warrant alleges, that from about 30 June 2012 to 10 July 2012 in Timbuktu, al-Mahdi committed the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against historical monuments or buildings dedicated to religion. The case against al-Mahdi represented the first time, the ICC had indicted an individual for the war crime of attacking religious buildings or historical monuments and it was the first case, before the ICC arising out of the situation in Mali. The arrest warrant listed ten monuments in Timbuktu, at least one of which is a World Heritage Site, that al-Mahdi attacked:

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