International cultural heritage law expert Dr Marina Lostal will speak about the arrest of Ahmad Al Faqi Al-Mahdi in connection with the destruction of mausoleums and a mosque in Timbuktu at a talk to be held at Kent on Tuesday 8 November.
Entitled: ‘The Al-Mahdi case at the International Criminal Court: one step forward, two steps back?’, the talk will be hosted by Kent Law School’s Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL) and the Centre for Heritage at Kent.
Dr Lostal is a lecturer in International Law at The Hague University, an ad hoc lecturer at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and a consultant for Geneva Call in the study on the relationship between the protection of cultural property and non-state actors. Previously, she has worked in China, Australia, Germany and Finland. Marina holds a PhD on the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict, and an LLM from the University of Cambridge. She is admitted to practice in Spain and has assisted the Karadzic stand-by defence team at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia during the final phase of the trial. Marina is specialized in the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict, and her book on the subject, International Cultural Heritage Law in Armed Conflict, will be published next year by Cambridge University Press.
Al Mahdi was arrested in Niger and surrendered to the International Criminal Court in September 2015 in connection with the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque in the world heritage city of Timbuktu. He was the first suspect being transferred to The Hague in connection to the armed conflict in Mali, and the first person to ever be “only” charged with the crime of directing attacks against cultural heritage.
In her abstract for the talk, Dr Lostal says: ‘While it is true that there usually are intimate links between material heritage and immaterial practices, in the presentation, I will argue that placing such emphasis on the “immaterial” side of episodes of destruction is counterproductive and short-sighted. This is because a pure anthropocentric reading of this crime runs against the history of the prohibition of attacks against cultural heritage, and following such rationale would severely curtail the crime’s ambit of application.’
The talk, which will be held in Keynes Lecture Theatre 5 (KLT5) at 6pm, is open to all staff and students.