According to the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Abdulaziz Al-Hassan has left behind him a multitude of damning evidence. In delivering his indictment on Tuesday May 23, the deputy prosecutor Gilles Dutertre assured that he had evidence ” abundant ” For ” demonstrate guilt” of this former commissioner of the Islamic police in crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in 2012 during the occupation of northern Mali by jihadist groups.
Created at the end of 2012 by Iyad Ag-Ghali, the armed organization Ansar Dine, ” a proxy of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) according to the prosecutor’s office, puts Timbuktu in check. Originally from the region, Abdoulaziz Al-Hassan was one of the recruits responsible for making the link with the local population. But it is fear that reigns. The city is changing radically, witnesses said during the three years of the trial. ” Overnight, everything became haram, illicit, forbidden “, explained one of them. No more dancing, music, football, alcohol, cigarettes, charms, television…
At the Malian Solidarity Bank (BMS), the new commissioner Abdoulaziz Al-Hassan then fulfilled his mission with “ zealous “, Continues the deputy prosecutor. On the pediment of the building is his own mobile number, 79 26 23 92, as a simple invitation to inform. ” It’s clear, it’s without complex, says Mr. Dutertre, Al-Hassan clearly adheres to the designs of Ansar Dine and AQIM, to establish their power and control over the population and in particular over women. “The Accused” is an important piece of the overall system of persecution », Assures the accusation. He is “ubiquitous”, ” unavoidable “. In Timbuktu, he summons, he patrols, he arrests, he interrogates “.
“Interrogated and tortured, but in vain”
There are the thirty-nine police reports, which he writes and signs, “ mentioning, if necessary, the use of torture “. “ It’s spelled out [dans un rapport] by Al-Hassan: “Interrogated and tortured, but in vain” “, quotes the prosecutor. There are also videos, like the one in which we see the accused whipping a young man. On another tour of a market, he is filmed ignoring pleas for clemency from a woman on the ground being flogged by another man.
Other images held by the judges but not shown in court show Abdulaziz Al-Hassan watching an execution. He ” is so zealous, he does so much and so well in the eyes of the leaders of Ansar Dine and AQIM that he becomes the emir of the Islamic police towards the end of 2012 beginning of 2013 “says the deputy prosecutor.
The prosecution dwelt for long minutes on the fate of the women and girls of Timbuktu, often raped, sometimes subjected to slavery: ” For months, they will live in a constant climate of oppression, insecurity and fear. They are harassed on a daily basis, they are hunted down in the streets, in schools, in hospitals and sometimes even in their own homes. »
“The Nightmare Cell”
The ATM of the Malian Solidarity Bank, which became the headquarters of Abdulaziz Al-Hassan, is nicknamed by some women “Nightmare Cell”. Police sometimes detain women and girls there for weeks in the sweltering heat. They are not even taken to the toilet. ” Six months later, when the forensic expert from the prosecutor’s office went there, it still smelled like urine. “says Mr. Dutertre. He again quotes one of the witnesses who ” had the impression that these jihadists carried within them the hatred of the female gender “.
Behind a team of lawyers made up mainly of women, Abdoulaziz Al-Hassan listens without blinking, his hands joined. Me Melinda Taylor says her client joined Ansar Dine seven months after the occupation began. His client would have had no other choice, and ” when you start working for Ansar Dine, leaving the group is not an option “, she specifies. His wife had just given birth, which would have made it impossible to flee to Mauritania. Above all he was Tuareg “, adds the Australian lawyer and he would have been targeted by the Malian army, she assures.
This trial is the second conducted by the ICC for the destruction of the mausoleums of Timbuktu. Another jihadist, Ahmad Al-Mahdi, served a nine-year prison sentence, after pleading guilty to war crimes for the destruction of the city’s mausoleums to the 333 saints. The verdict of the ICC judges regarding Abdulaziz Al-Hassan will not be known for several months.