The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for one of the leading militant Islamist leaders in the Sahel region.
Although the arrest warrant against Iyad Ag Ghaly, the alleged leader of the extremist Islamist group Ansar Dine, was issued in 2017, it has not yet been made public.
The charges against Ghaly, also known as Abou Fadl, stem from the capture of the historic city of Timbuktu in Mali by Ansar Dine in 2012. Ghaly is a Malian citizen and belongs to the Tuareg ethnic group.
He is accused of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity that he allegedly committed in 2012 and 2013. These include rape, murder, sexual slavery, torture and attacks on buildings of religious or historical significance.
Using pickaxes, shovels, hammers and other objects, the militants destroyed hundreds of centuries-old shrines and earthen tombs of the Sufi movement in the desert city.
Ghaly “is suspected of having committed these crimes jointly with and/or through others,” the ICC said in a statement.
The ICC also said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Ghaly was the “undisputed leader” of Ansar Dine at the time he seized power and that Ansar Dine and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb shared control of Timbuktu after the seizure.
According to a report by Agence France-Presse, the arrest warrant was not made public when it was issued in 2017 because of the “potential risks to witnesses and victims.”
Ghaly was not arrested.
The ICC does not have the power to detain suspects. Instead, it relies on its member states to arrest suspects. The court, based in The Hague, is the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal.
Some information for this report comes from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
