Last night at a symposium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on saving endangered heritage in Iraq and Syria, Unesco’s director-general Irina Bokova brought attention to a significant “first” in the fight against cultural destruction, unfolding this week at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.
The alleged Islamic militant Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi is the first person to be charged with war crimes related to the destruction of cultural heritage under the Rome Statute, which went into effect in 2002. After the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest, he was extradited by Niger and turned over to the custody of the court on Saturday, 27 September. According to a statement released that day by Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the ICC, he is accused of “intentionally directing attacks” in 2012 on ten religious and historic monuments in the Unesco World Heritage city of Timbuktu, Mali.
Al Mahdi appeared in court today, Wednesday, 30 September, where he was presented with the charges. According to the Associated Press, he briefly introduced himself and said he was a civil servant in the education department in Mali, but did not comment on the charges and was not required to enter a plea. A hearing to decide whether there is strong enough evidence to merit a trial is scheduled for 18 January 2015.
Meanwhile, at the same conference at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced another “first”: the US Department of State—which co-sponsored the event—is offering a reward of up to $5m for information that could stop the sale or trade of antiquities or oil that would benefit Isil. Never before has the “Rewards for Justice” programme, which began in 1984, involved the protection of cultural heritage, said Robert Hartung, a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department, as reported in our sister paper Le Journal des Arts.