Justice is sought for the destruction of the many historical artifacts, including the many ancient written records kept in Timbuktu’s oldest mosque and destruction of the shrines of saints in the city, during the 2012 uprising, as the first suspect in the case is turned over to International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for trial. Ahmed al Faqi al Mahdi, an Islamist fighting with the Ansar al Dine Islamist militant group, is to be tried for attacks on buildings of religious significance and his attempts to “cleanse” Timbuktu of “idolatry” through the burning of its ancient library of manuscripts, which contain some of the most detailed records of the history of the Islamic world in Mali and North Africa.
This is the first ever instance of a person being charged in the jurisdiction for “cultural destruction as a war crime”, which is very significant and hopefully will set a future precident for the protection of the world’s most valued historical sites when they are threatened, damaged or destroyed by war.
Deliberate defacement and erasure of important national heritage sites and ancient ruins, such as the large carvings of the Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan which were ruined by rocket propelled grenade fire from the Taliban, the levelling and demolition of the Hatra ruins in Iraq (made famous by the movie “The Exorcist”) and the destruction of the Palmyra complex in Syria by Islamic State militants convinced the archaeological site was “sacrilage and idolatry” has been an increasingly important issue worldwide, as conflicts destroy not only the lives of people but the relics and memories of their heritage.
The UN is attempting to demonstrate by this method that the criminals who attack these precious monuments of the past are culpable for prosecution for their crimes, and attempts to visibly “rewrite” history by the selective removal of national symbols and carefully preserved elements of the past will not succeed.
(source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/world/africa/suspect-arrested-in-destruction-of-monuments-in-mali.html?_r=0)