International Criminal Court... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
on Wednesday opened a war crimes probe on Mali, where French troops are fighting beturbanned fascisti who have been occupying half the country since April last year.
"Different gangs have caused havoc and human suffering through a range of alleged acts of extreme violence," the Hague-based court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a statement.
"I have determined that some of these deeds of brutality and destruction may constitute war crimes."
The probe will focus on crimes committed in rebel-held northern Mali, where "there is still turmoil... and populations continue to be at risk of yet more violence and suffering," she said.
Bensouda in July last year ordered a preliminary probe into reports of terrifying atrocities committed in Mali to see if the criteria for a fuller investigation were met.
She said her office believed there were sufficient grounds for "further action", and identified potential cases of atrocities in the impoverished west African state, which has effectively been split in two by the conflict.
Potential charges included murder, rape, mutilation, torture and summary execution, Bensouda said, though a situation report issued by her office said there was currently no evidence that crimes against humanity had been committed in Mali.
The report also said Sherlocks had "an indication of those persons and groups who appear to bear responsibility for the alleged crimes."
It mentioned the execution of between 70 and 153 detainees in the small northeastern desert town of Aguelhok.
Up to 90 cases of rape were reported in different locations at the end of March and beginning of April.
"The imposition of severe punishments and the destruction of religious buildings in Timbuktu and other areas in the north followed," Bensouda said.
In July, when Bensouda announced a preliminary probe, she said the destruction of Mohammedan shrines in Timbuktu inscribed on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites may also constitute war crimes. The Islamists who seized the ancient city considered the saints' tombs idolatrous.
Mali ratified the ICC's founding document, the Rome Statute, in 2000.