Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 46, is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, rape and sexual slavery, and destroying religious and historic buildings.
Prosecutors say Al Hassan personally oversaw amputations and floggings as police chief when Islamic militants seized control of Timbuktu for almost a year from early 2012.
During the trial, which opened in 2020, prosecutors said Timbuktu citizens had lived in fear of “despicable” violence, citing the case of a man whose hand was amputated after being accused of petty theft.
“He was tied to a chair… and his hand was chopped off with a machete. A member of the armed group then held up his hand as a signal to others,” said then-chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Bensouda said the women and girls of Timbuktu suffered most under the “gender-based persecution” in force under Al Hassan’s alleged reign of terror.
He is accused of forcing women and girls to “marry” fighters, with some victims raped multiple times, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said he was “personally involved” in flogging women accused of adultery. Other women were allegedly beaten for what the Islamists saw as misdemeanors such as not wearing gloves.
Al Hassan himself told investigators that the people of Timbuktu were “scared out of their minds”, according to the prosecutor.
Platform with AFP
