(CN) — The International Criminal Court achieved resounding success Monday in its first effort to prosecute the destruction of a cultural heritage as a war crime, as an Islamist fighter from Mali pleaded guilty to demolishing Sufi shrines that cemented Timbuktu's reputation as the "City of 333 Saints."
Born roughly 62 miles west of that storied city in 1975, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi appeared before The Hague-based tribunal this morning in a dark-blue suit with a matching striped shirt and tie.
The color scheme on Faqi's Western wardrobe is fitting for a man of his cultural ancestry. Faqi belongs to the Tuareg people, a nomadic tribe of Berbers sometimes known as the "Blue Men of the Sahara" for the indigo pigment on their traditional robes and turbans.
As civil war erupted in Northern Mali in early 2012, Faqi had been part of a band of Tuareg separatists who formed an offshoot of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb called Ansar Dine.
In his former post heading Ansar Dine's anti-vice unit, known as the "Manners' Brigade," Faqi saw himself as a guardian of the city's morality. This morning, however, Faqi described his former comrades as a "deviant group of people." Faqi bemoaned the U.S.-designated terrorist group's ability to "influence me and carry me through their evil wave."
As the rebels took hold of Timbuktu, the United Nations' cultural agency UNESCO quickly pronounced the fabled West African trading city an endangered heritage site in June 2012, and the world watched in horror as the group demolished Sufi shrines days after this declaration.
This morning, Faqi admitted to charges that he intentionally directed attacks against nine mausoleums and one mosque, among the tombs and shrines of 333 mystical Islamic saints venerated by locals there since the 13th century.
"I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world not to get involved in the same acts that I got involved in because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity," Faqi told the chamber, along with viewers of the tribunal's roughly 10-minute feed.
The case has been widely broadcast since the ICC's prosecutor Fatou Bensouda declared the destruction of the holy site a war crime as the events unfolded.
Bensouda, a lawyer from Gambia, had assumed office mere weeks before the cultural destruction, and launched her preliminary investigation at Mali's request weeks later.
With the tribunal's spotty record holding dictators into account for genocide, rape and torture, some observers puzzled over the prosecution of a war crime involving a proverbial bricks-and-mortar victim, but art historians applauded the court's signal that crimes against antiquities would be taken seriously.
Erin Thompson, a professor at Manhattan's John Jay College who specializes in art crime, anticipated that the case would fire a shot across the bow heard by members of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
"Up to now, the destruction and looting of cultural property has been seen as low-risk and without consequences," Thompson said in an interview. "Now, we've shown that destruction will be treated as a serious crime and prosecuted. I hope to see the elaborate videos that IS produced, documenting their destruction of sites like Palmyra, playing again soon - in a courtroom."