PARIS — A jihadist fighter from Mali was brought before the International Criminal Court on Wednesday to face charges of rape, torture and sexual slavery, crimes that prosecutors say were perpetrated while he was the head of the police during a jihadist occupation of the ancient city of Timbuktu.

At the hearing in The Hague, prosecutors said that Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 40, had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2012 and 2013 by abusing, whipping and torturing residents who violated strict religious laws.

He forced young women to marry jihadist fighters, “which led to repeated rapes and sexual enslavement of young women and girls,” they said.

Officials say girls were forced into marriages, some lasting only a few days or a few weeks, in an attempt to provide a justification for their being forced to have sex. “If a girl ran away, she would be tracked down and brought back,” said a lawyer working on the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details. “Children were born from these forced marriages.”