Interactive Digital Platforms, Human Rights Fact Production, and the International Criminal Court

Abstract The International Criminal Court (ICC) initiated criminal proceedings against Ahmad Al Faqi Mahdi in 2016 for the war crime of directing the destruction of religious monuments in Timbuktu, Mali, in the context of a non-international conflict. The monuments included nine mausoleums of Sufi saints that Islamist groups regarded as idolatrous, one mosque, and approximately four thousand ancient manuscripts. The case, which successfully ended in a guilty plea, marks the first time that the ICC charged an individual with a ‘cultural heritage’ crime. The prosecution’s argument during the hearing relied heavily on an interactive digital platform that facilitated the organization, analysis, and presentation of the evidence to the court. SITU, an applied research organization, created the platform in collaboration with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor. It combined geospatial information, historic satellite imagery, photographs, open-source videos, and other types of site documentation to help the ICC judges visualize what was no longer physically there. The result was a digital reconstruction featuring structures and their contents lost to explosives, pickaxes, and hammers. The theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues that arose out of the collaboration, the focus of this article, highlights the multiple ways in which such platforms fashion ‘facts’ rather than objectively present them. A close analysis of the design decisions made, visualization techniques employed, and presentation strategies used to support the case against the defendant highlights both the possibilities and limits of such platforms as part of future international criminal proceedings.