Sit-in of solidarity with Moroccans detained on Algerian territory
Morocco-Algeria, Politics, 7/30/2002

A sit-in of solidarity with the Moroccans detained on Algerian territory was staged this Monday in front of the UN representation in Rabat.

The participants in the sit-in, organized by the Moroccan national social association of the sons of martyrs and missing people of the Moroccan Sahara, waving candles, condemned the torture inflicted on the Moroccans detained by the Polisario separatist group on Algerian soil.

The protesters renewed the Moroccan identity of the Sahara and rejected any solution based on the partition of the Sahara.

They brandished banners calling the United Nations to take urgent moves to release all the Moroccans imprisoned in Tindouf, stronghold of the Polisario in southwestern Algeria, and to pressure the Algerian government to hand over to Morocco the corpses of the Moroccan detainees who passed away in captivity.

The protesters also requested the setting up of "an international committee to be entrusted with investigating the crimes perpetrated against the Moroccan detainees and bringing war criminals to court."

Some former detainees who were released recently participated in the protest movement. One of them told reporters of the ordeal in the Polisario jails, describing the unbearable living conditions in Tindouf, the torture practices inflicted on the detainees and how the detainees were forced to remain exposed to the heat of the sun from morning to sunset. He said he could not get any news of his family from 1979 to 1996.

Echoing him, another participant said that the detainees were deprived from most basic medicare and that he himself suffered from a toothache for too long before he extracted the tooth by his own means, with the help of some inmates.

The protesters addressed a letter to the UN secretary General demanding the release of the Moroccan soldiers and civilians detained in Tindouf.

The letter underlines the deteriorating physical and psychological poor condition of the Moroccan detainees and denounces all the forms of torture they are submitted to.

It recalls that the latest report of the International Committee of the Red Cross had clearly spoken of the plight of the Moroccans still held captive and that the physical condition of those who were released recently clearly evidences the inhuman and barbarous treatment they had been inflicted while in detention, in blatant violation of all international conventions on prisoners of war.

Previous Stories:
  Morocco calls on security council to allow for more mediation in sahara issue   (7/24/2002)
  Algeria wants end to Sahara conflict   (7/22/2002)
  Moroccan and Algerian press over Moroccan-Spanish row over Leila islet   (7/18/2002)

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