THE HAGUE: A Malian militant appeared for the first time before an international war crimes judge on Wednesday, accused of demolishing Timbuktu’s fabled shrines, as well as rape, torture and sex slavery.

Speaking in Arabic, Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud confirmed his identity and date of birth at a brief hearing at the International Criminal Court, and said he had been informed of the charges against him and his rights.

Hassan was captured over the weekend by Malian authorities and swiftly transferred to the Netherlands late Saturday.

Prosecutors allege the 40-year-old “committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Timbuktu, Mali, between April 2012 and January 2013.” A member of the Ansar Dine militant group, Hassan was the “de facto chief of the Islamic police” in Timbuktu, the ICC said.

The armed groups which swept across the remote northern Mali region in 2012 seizing control of the UNESCO-protected site “imposed their vision of religion, through terror, on a local population who didn’t adhere to it,” alleges Hassan’s arrest warrant, unveiled at the weekend by the court.

Hassan had about 40 Islamic police under his control and “played a leading role in committing crimes, as well as religious and sexist persecution”.

“All infractions” of the strict Islamic laws were “punished by whippings, torture during detention and the destruction of sites devoted to religious practises,” the warrant says, adding that Hassan himself took part in the lashings.

He also allegedly “participated in the policy of forced marriages which victimised the female inhabitants of Timbuktu and led to repeated rapes and the sexual enslavement of women and girls,” the court added.

Dubbed “The City of 333 saints”, Timbuktu’s holy shrines were built in the 15th and 16th centuries when it was revered as a centre of Islamic learning and a spiritual hub.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2018