THE HAGUE: Terrorists and Tuareg separatists were advancing in northern Mali on Tuesday, three days after launching unprecedented attacks against the ruling junta, in what the government’s Russian allies said remained a “difficult” situation.
Junta chief Assimi Goita has not appeared or spoken publicly since the coordinated dawn attacks on Saturday on strategic junta positions, including areas around the capital, Bamako.
The attacks were the largest in nearly 15 years and saw two former foes — radical insurgents and Tuareg separatists — join forces against the junta and its Russian paramilitary backers.
Defense Minister Sadio Camara — seen as the mastermind behind the junta’s pivot to Russia — was killed in two days of fierce fighting.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the rebels, who have captured a key town in the mostly desert north, were “regrouping” and the situation “remains difficult.”
The fighting saw “attempts made to seize key facilities in the capital, Bamako — first and foremost, the presidential palace”, the ministry said.
It confirmed that mercenaries from Russia’s Africa Corps, controlled by the government in Moscow and sent to back up the Malian junta, had been forced to withdraw from the northern town of Kidal, now under the armed groups’ control.
The Kremlin, separately, said it urgently wanted peace and stability in Mali, which has battled more than a decade of jihadist violence and other conflict.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court on Tuesday ordered an Al-Qaeda-linked extremist leader to pay €7.2 million ($8.4 million) in reparations for atrocities he oversaw as head of the religious police in the historic desert city of Timbuktu in the west African country of Mali.
Al-Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud was convicted of torture, religious persecution and other inhumane acts in 2024 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Judges found he was a “key figure” in a reign of terror after extremist rebels overran Timbuktu in 2012.
“Mr. Al Hassan, as the person found responsible for the crimes, which caused the harm to the victims, is the person financially liable for the cost of repairing the harm,” Presiding Judge Kimberly Prost said, addressing the courtroom in the Dutch city of The Hague.
While the court has declared Al-Hassan liable, it won’t be able to collect the money from the 49-year old, who was declared indigent and was represented by a court-funded lawyer during his trial.
Instead, reparations for the more than 65,000 victims will be paid by the Trust Fund for Victims, set up by the court’s member states to distribute the funds.
We are “one of the many innovations of the Rome Statute,” the fund’s executive director Deborah Ruiz Verduzco, said.
Under the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, the fund “responds to the harm resulting from the crimes under the jurisdiction.” The 24 staff members in Ruiz Verduzco’s office are tasked with assisting victims and their families, establishing programs in communities destroyed by violence and drumming up financial support to fulfil its mandate.
In its two decades of operation, the trust fund has only received money from perpetrators in one case.
“Substantial fundraising will need to take place,” Judge Prost said on Tuesday.
The bulk of the money will come from the court’s member states, though the fund also accepts private donations. In March, Germany gave $46,000 to the fund. Sweden and the Netherlands are the two biggest supporters.
Judges guide how the reparations money will be allocated, though they solicit input from the victims themselves through their lawyers and the trust fund.
