Mauritanian Authorities arrest people smuggler from separatist Polisario
Mauritania-Morocco, Politics, 11/2/2004

Mauritanian security forces on Sunday arrested a member of the separatist movement "Polisario" while he was attempting to smuggle into the Moroccan territory 52 would-be immigrants from Sub Saharan Africa. These are:19 from Ghana, 16 from Gambia and 17 from Mali.

The 54 year-old smuggler, identified only by his initials O.M, was arrested near the locality of Bir Mogrein (310 km northeast of the Mauritanian city of Zouerate).

According to Nouakchott authorities, he was paid 800 Euros by these illegal immigrants who wanted to reach the Moroccan Sahara before being smuggled into the Spanish Canary Islands.

During the arrest, they seized a 4X4 vehicle registered in Lahmada, in the Tindouf camps, southwestern Algeria, where the separatist movement has its headquarters and where it is holding against their will thousands of Moroccan Sahara natives wishing to flee to the Moroccan southern provinces, known as the Sahara. The former Spanish colony was retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under the Madrid Accords but the Algeria-backed separatist movement want to separate these provinces from the Kingdom.

Mauritanian authorities had arrested in the first week of October in various regions of the Tirs Zemmour Wilaya, along the borders with Morocco, 125 candidates to illegal migration trying to enter Morocco in vehicles belonging to the Polisario.

People smuggling has become the most important "economic activity" practiced by the Polisario mercenaries in the region, in particular after the severe measures taken recently by Mauritanian authorities against cigarettes and other goods smugglers, by controlling trucks coming from those camps and forbidding their access to the Mauritanian territory.

United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan recently voiced concern over clandestine migration in the zones where the UN peace keeping mission MINURSO,(French acronym for the UN mission in the Sahara) is operating. The latter has been deployed in the territory since 1991 to supervise the ceasefire concluded between Morocco and the Polisario.

Kofi Annan said he was concerned over "an increasingly growing phenomenon of illegal migrants, transiting Western Sahara en route to Europe."

"The appearance in the heavily-mined buffer strip of clandestine migrants, groups of whom occasionally remain stranded there without proper means of sustainment for a long period of time, is a matter of growing concern. This is obviously part of a much broader phenomenon of trafficking in human beings through the region," Annan warned in his latest report on the Sahara to the security council.

"I bring this issue to the attention of the Security Council, however, because of the fact that it occurs in the area of operations of MINURSO, which has neither the mandate nor the resources to deal with it. The secretariat is reviewing this development with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration, and I call on all parties and Member States to cooperate in taking the steps necessary to address this issue, on humanitarian grounds," he said.

Last May, the Polisario provided shelter for a group of 23 individuals from Bangladesh and India near the MINURSO team site at Mijek, the report added.

In September, another group of 20 individuals from Pakistan had been found near the MINURSO Tifariti team site. They claimed they had been abandoned in the desert by their guides, who had promised them passage to Europe.

Violent clashes over the control of clandestine migration gangs opposed last October the Polisario members, leaving several victims near the Moroccan-Mauritanian borders.

A journalist from French TV channel "France 2" who made a report on illegal migration to the Canary Islands had revealed that "people from southern Morocco who organize illegal migration operations to the Canary Islands are pro-polisario sahrawis."

Previous Stories:
  King Mohammed VI receives Mauritanian interior minister   (10/15/2004)
  Polisario gangs continue human trafficking from Mauritania into Morocco   (10/5/2004)
  Morocco, Mauritania have similar views on security and development issues, Official   (8/27/2004)

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