Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi who was sentenced to nine years in jail for destroying mausoleums in Timbuktu in 2016, has been freed.
al Mahdi, a former head of the “Hisba” (Islamic police) in Timbuktu, northern Mali, under the rule of the Ansar Dine jihadists has been a free man since September 18, 2022 after serving seven years of his prison sentence.
The Court of Appeal of the International Criminal Court (ICC) granted a remission to the jihadist leader, reducing his sentence from the nine he received in September 2016 to seven years.
Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi was prosecuted for war crimes, destruction of the nine mausoleums of Timbuktu and the gate of the Sidy Yahya Mosque.
The former jihadist leader made amends by apologising to the population of Timbuktu and the Malian people.
However, he remains under surveillance in his host country, England, where he was transferred in 2018 to serve his sentence.
Born in 1975 in a village on the outskirts of Timbuktu, Ahmad al Faqi Al Mahdi was educated in the precepts of Sufi Islam.
Exiled to Libya between 1996 and 2001, he enlisted in the Libyan army where he claims to have served for four years.
Back in Mali in 2006, he settled in Timbuktu and started to preach in mosques before he was recruited as a school headmaster in 2010.
In 2012, when the city of Timbuktu fell to the jihadists of Ansar Dine, close to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, at the behest of Iyad Ag Ghali, Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi was in Algeria.
Convinced by the jihadist cause, he joined them on his return and became the head of the police force, responsible for “promoting virtue and preventing vice.”
If Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi regretted the time spent within Ansar Dine, this is not the case with his former mentor, Iyad Ag Ghali, who has experienced a meteoric rise within the Sahelian jihadist movement.
Since March 2017, this former notable figure of the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali has been designated emir of the Group of Support for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the main alliance of organisations affiliated to AQIM.
This alliance is a major factor in the deteriorating security situation in the Sahel and recently in the Gulf of Guinea countries.
AC/cgd/lb/as/APA