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1.Introduction: State of the Art of Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage under International Law
In the past few years, with the materialization of ISIL in the Middle East, the plague of intentional destruction of cultural heritage has reached a hemorrhagic level. Beginning in 2014, the Caliphate has blatantly destroyed and obliterated forever a huge amount of irreplaceable pieces of cultural heritage in Iraq, Syria and Libya, including mosques, shrines, churches, ancient sites (like the Roman city of Palmyra), libraries and monuments (including the famous Lion of Al-lāt statue in Palmyra).1) However, unfortunately, in human history the heinous practice of discharging blind and iconoclastic rage against the heritage of humanity has not been a monopoly of ISIS. On the contrary, deliberate destruction of cultural heritage has characterized all epochs and areas of the world. Among the most recent and unfortunate examples - prior to the extensive destruction perpetrated by ISIL in the Middle East - one may cite the systematic devastation of mosques and other religious buildings during the Balkan wars in the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s,2) the demolition of the Stari Most (Old Bridge) in Mostar, in November 1993,3) the infamous destruction of two ancient giant Buddha statues in the Afghan valley of Bamiyan by the Taliban in March 2001,4) the demolition of 38 Shia mosques and the sacred religious objects contained therein by the government of Bahrain in 2011,5) as well as the destruction of mausoleums and shrines by the extremist Islamic group Ansar Dine in the ancient city of Timbuktu, in Mali, in June-July 2012.6) Under international law, the connotation of intentional destruction of cultural heritage as a violation of the laws and customs of war is beyond any doubt. This connotation has been expressly recognized since the end of the XIX Century, particularly in the Hague Conventions on the laws and customs of war of 1899 and 1907,7) although no reference to the terms cultural property or cultural heritage was included in the relevant rules. Subsequently, the two 1977 Protocols additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions on humanitarian law established - respectively for international and non-international armed conflicts - the prohibition to commit acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the...