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40-year-old Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi is the first jihadist to stand trial at the tribunal in The Hague and will be sentenced by a three-judge bench.

Last month, Mahdi pleaded guilty to destroying nine monuments in Timbuktu and the centuries-old door of the historic Sidi Yahia mosque in 2012.

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After videos of him and other Islamist extremists razing mausoleums with bulldozers,Mahdi had apologised to people.

The residents of Timbuktu, which has now been restored, say they are ready to forgive him., AFP reported.

This is the first verdict to focus solely on cultural devastation as a war crime.

El-Boukhari Ben Essayouti, who headed the reconstruction of the monuments with UNESCO assistance, told AFP that Mahdi`s trial was an important lesson.

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The trial "has to be useful for something, showing to everyone that in the same way that we cannot kill another person with impunity, we cannot just destroy a world heritage site with impunity either," he said.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was however considered idolatrous by the jihadists who swept across Mali`s remote north in early 2012.

As the head of the so-called Hisbah or "Manners Brigade," it was Mahdi, a former teacher and Islamic scholar, who gave the orders to ransack the sites.Apologising for his actions at the court, he said he had been overtaken by "evil spirits", urging Muslims not to follow his example, and saying he wanted to seek the pardon of all Malians.

Prosecutors say Mahdi, born in 1975, was a member of the Ansar Dine, one of the jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which seized the northern territory before being mostly chased out by a French-led military intervention in January 2013.

Prosecutors have asked for a jail term of between nine and 11 years, which they said would recognise both the severity of the crime and the fact that Mahdi was the first person to plead guilty before the court.

"The verdict is eagerly awaited," said Lassana Cisse, Mali`s national heritage director, adding that it must be a "punishment which sets an example."

Even though the list of UNESCO world heritage sites appears to be growing there is little hope that those behind attacks on monuments in Iraq and Syria will find themselves in the dock any time soon.

Neither country is a signatory to the ICC`s founding Rome Statute, meaning that without a mandate from the UN Security Council an ICC investigation into such crimes is not yet possible.