Mali: final stage of ICC trial of Timbuktu's former Islamist police chief

The entrance to the ICC Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. REUTERS/Jerry Lampen/File Photo

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Abdulaziz al-Hassan is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). On trial, for the past three years, he has been charged with torture, persecution, forced marriages, rape and sexual slavery. The Malian was a commissioner in Timbuktu's Islamic police during the occupation by jihadist groups AQIM and Ansar Dine in 2012. Oral submissions in this case are scheduled at the ICC from 23 to 25 May 2023.

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With our correspondent in The Hague, Stéphanie Maupas

He was the "mastermind" of the Islamic police. This is how the prosecution described Abdulaziz al-Hassan at the opening of his trial. Arrested by the Barkhane force in 2017, then transferred to The Hague, the Malian Tuareg refused to say whether he pleaded guilty or not.

For the prosecution, the commissioner of the Islamic police organizes, with others, the repression in Timbuktu. Alcohol, music, football, cigarettes and adultery are now banned... In some videos, the accused appears to lash, with his own hands, the offenders.

He is zealous, even though his lawyers insist that Al Hassan did not join Ansar Dine until seven months after the occupation began, by default and not by choice.

Like others enlisted before him, al-Hassan gives a local base to the jihadist group, to obtain the confidence of a population cut down. His lawyers told the story of a man who spent his youth in the camps of Libya, fleeing the violence of the Malian army and drought... and who, returning to the country, as a taxi driver and then a pharmacist, will become rebellious by necessity.

The occupation of northern Mali in 2012 will make him a jihadist, not an extremist, assures his defense. The judges will have to decide.

" READ ALSO – Mali: the trial of the alleged jihadist Al-Hassan opens at the ICC

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• Mali
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