The International Criminal Court heard Monday that the destruction of shrines in Mali’s famous city of Timbuktu was caused by the French colonizers’ “negligence.”

A police commander suspected of playing a key role during the jihadist occupation of the city known as the “Pearl of the Desert” in 2012-13 is on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Hague-based tribunal.

“The events of 2012 are the result of corruption and the negligence of the French colonizers,” said Melinda Taylor, defending Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud.

“The state of Mali was a fiction created by French colonizers that existed on paper, but never in reality,” Taylor told the judges on an opening day.

The French left the “north of the country to fend for themselves,” according to tribal and religious practices, the lawyer said.

Timbuktu was occupied by the jihadist group Ansar Dine, one of the Al-Qaeda-linked factions which controlled Mali in 2012 before being driven out by a French-led international intervention.

During the occupation, the jihadists also took pickaxes to 14 of the town’s famous mausoleums of revered Muslim figures.

Al Hassan however “should not be convicted because he happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time and because of his ethnicity,” said Taylor.

“The question is not whether these crimes were committed in Timbuktu but whether this person sitting in front of you should bear the responsibility for these crimes,” she added.

Prosecutors say Al Hassan, 44, was a key figure in the police and court system set up by the militants after they exploited an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to take over cities in Mali’s volatile north.

Al Hassan committed “unimaginable crimes”, personally overseeing corporal punishments, including floggings and amputations as well as arranging for women and girls to be forced to marry militants as part of a system of gender-based persecution, prosecutors said.

Following a groundbreaking 2016 judgment at the world’s only permanent war crimes court, he is the second Islamist to face trial at the ICC over the destruction of Timbuktu’s shrines.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi was found guilty of coordinating attacks on the UNESCO World Heritage site and sentenced to nine years in prison by ICC judges.