One defendant said the jihadists’ crimes were “fruits of French negligence.”

A jihadist lawyer who was tried before the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity said the destruction of shrines in Timbuktu, the legendary sanctuary in Mali, was the result of the neglect of the French colonists.

Under the yoke of the jihadists, a wave of destruction fell in 2012 and 2013 on the city, which was founded by Tuareg tribes between the fifth and twelfth centuries and named “the city of 333 saints” in relation to the number of Muslim sages who lived and were buried there. .

“The events of 2012 are the result of the corruption and negligence of the French colonists,” declared before the judges of the International Criminal Court Melinda Taylor, lawyer for El Hassan Ag Abdelaziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud known as El Hassan.

El Hassan, 44, a Malian national and father of five, is being tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

He is accused of perpetrating torture, rape and sexual slavery in the context of forced marriage, and of destroying shrines in Timbuktu, nicknamed the “Pearl of the Desert”.

Ms. Taylor continued: “The country of Mali was a fantasy invented by the French colonialists that existed on paper but did not exist in reality.”

She added that the French “left the north of the country to fend for themselves” according to tribal and religious practices.

Al Hassan, whose trial began in 2020, was a key figure in the Islamist police and justice system established by jihadists in northern Mali in 2012, according to the prosecution.

“The question is not whether these crimes were committed in Timbuktu but whether this person sitting in front of you should take responsibility for these crimes,” Hassan’s lawyer said.

“Hassan should not be convicted because he lived in the wrong place at the wrong time and because of his race,” Melinda Taylor said.

She said he was “religious but not extremist”, and would go to concerts in Timbuktu and “flirt with girls”.

El Hassan is the second Malian jihadist to be tried by the International Criminal Court for the destruction of Timbuktu’s shrines, a site listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. In 2016, the court sentenced Ahmed al-Faqi al-Mahdi to nine years in prison.