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| - A Malian jihadist police chief committed "unimaginable crimes" during a reign of terror in the fabled shrine city of Timbuktu, prosecutors told the International Criminal Court at the start of his trial Tuesday. Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 42, personally oversaw corporal punishments including amputations and floggings while the Malian city was under the control of Islamist militants for almost a year from early 2012, prosecutors said. Al Hassan -- who appeared in court in The Hague wearing a traditional turban, and a face mask to protect against coronavirus -- is charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape and sexual slavery. The jihadists from the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Eddine groups also destroyed the centuries-old shrines of Timbuktu, a city described as the "pearl of the desert". "Today marks the beginning of the long-awaited trial of the unimaginable crimes which have been committed in Mali," the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court. "Al Hassan was directly involved in the violence and torture inflicted on the men, the women and the children of Timbuktu. He worked in the heart of a repressive, persecuting system." The prosecutor said Al Hassan was a key figure in the Islamic police and court system set up by the militants after they exploited an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to take over cities in Mali's volatile north. "Timbuktu the pearl of the desert, whose population had been living in peace for years, was subject to their diktats," she said, adding that the militants' aim was to "strike fear into people, to spread terror". Al Hassan arrested people, conducted investigations during which suspects were tortured, referred cases to the Islamic court and "participated personally in the meting out of corporal punishment by the police," Bensouda said. She said the court would see a video in which a man's hand is amputated in a public square before the entire population of Timbuktu "in the most brutal way possible, with a type of long knife". Al Hassan "totally sanctions this criminal and brutal mutilation", Bensouda added. The Islamists are also accused of forcing women and girls to marry militants. Al Hassan is the second Islamist extremist to face trial at the ICC for the destruction of the Timbuktu shrines, following a landmark 2016 ruling at the world's only permanent war crimes court. In the court's first case to focus on cultural destruction, the ICC judges found Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi guilty of directing attacks on the UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012. He was sentenced to nine years in jail. Built between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu has also been dubbed "The City of 333 Saints" who were buried there during the golden age of Islam. Timbuktu's tombs were rebuilt after the jihadists were thrown out, but the city remains in the grip of insecurity and tourists who once flocked there are now scarce. dk/txw
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