Dakar, Senegal | | Friday 3/6/2015 - 18:22 GMT
Rights activists filed a lawsuit on Friday against a group of 15 jihadists over war crimes committed after northern Mali was seized by Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaeda.
The International Federation of Human Rights (IFHR) said it was bringing the action in Bamako on behalf of 33 victims of "the worst crimes committed" in the desert region of Timbuktu in 2012 and 2013.
"The legal system must address these complaints promptly and launch investigations as soon as possible to establish guilt and bring justice to the victims," it said in a statement co-signed by local rights groups.
The IFHR said it had spent the last two weeks in Timbuktu alongside the Malian Association of Human Rights collecting physical evidence and testimony from 50 victims and witnesses of torture, rape and other crimes.
Several Islamist militias linked to Al-Qaeda occupied Timbuktu and northern Mali's other towns and cities for nine months in 2012.
The groups exacted a brutal version of Islamic sharia characterised by amputations, beatings and executions before they were ousted by a French-led military intervention launched in January 2013.
The IFHR did not name the jihadists targeted by the lawsuit.
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