“The court is very much a court of opportunity,” he added. “It’s a court with very little power, little resources to investigate and very few tools to collect evidence. Is cultural heritage something the court will now focus on? Now that they’ve done one case, a second, similar case is unlikely.”

Limiting the ability of the court to pursue similar charges is its jurisdiction, which became effective in 2002. The court can pursue cases only in countries that are party to the treaty that oversees it, or cases that have been referred to it by the United Nations Security Council.

The Timbuktu shrines, brick and mud structures built from the 15th to 17th centuries atop the graves of Muslim scholars, are modest in comparison with the massive Buddha statues destroyed in Afghanistan or the Roman ruins demolished by the Islamic State in Syria.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban dynamited the 1,500-year-old Buddha sculptures in Bamian in 2001, calling the massive monuments “gods of the infidels.”