I found Haidara, one of Timbuktu's preeminent historians, in the blinding mid-morning glare of his family's stone courtyard, not far from the Sankore Mosque. He wanted to show me what he said was ...

He was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for attacking nine mausoleums and a mosque door in Timbuktu in 2012. A French-led military operation in 2013 forced Al Hassan and others from power.