Heartless jailors gouged out my eye, former Polisario detainee
Morocco, Politics, 2/15/2005

Moroccan Soldier Ahmed Al Hamdaoui returned lately to the motherland after he was sequestered by the Polisario separatists in the Tindouf camps (South-west Algeria) where he was inflicted various forms of torture during 14 years of sequestration.

Al Hamdaoui told the Moroccan news agency MAP, on Friday, that he had attempted to flee the Tindouf camps twice in 1993 and 1997, but his luck failed him and he fell again in the hands of his heartless jailors.

After hearing about some Moroccans who successfully fled thoese camps and joined the motherland, he made his first attempt in 1993.

Unfortunately, his attempt failed as Algerian soldiers arrested him at the security belt and delivered him to Polisario mercenaries who inflicted him the "most barbarous forms of torture and humiliation" in a blatant violation of international and humanitarian law.

The jailors, who tortured him with an untold savagery, gouged out his left eye with a knife.

The torture of Al Hamdaoui lasted for two years during which he witnessed inhumane abuses inflicted to Moroccan prisoners, a number of whom perished in torture.

Despite his suffering, he never gave up hope to embrace freedom. He attempted to flee Tindouf camps for the second time in 1997, but his luck failed him again.

After two days of persistent walking, he fell again in the hands of the heartless jailors in "Aghouinit," near the Mauritanian region of Zouirat.

He was sent to detention camps where, naked, he was inflicted various kinds of torture whose marks are still clear on different parts of his body including a bruise on his right eye that his torturer tried to gouge out.

After two months of suffering, Al Hamdaoui was sent to an area that the separatists call "Center of June 9" to keep him away of any hope to escape.

In this Center, he met Captain Al Makrazi and started planning their escape for more than six months, a hope that came true last Wednesday.

The Algeria-backed Polisario, which has been claiming the separation of the Moroccan Southern provinces (the Sahara) from the rest of the kingdom since 1975 when Morocco retrieved this former Spanish colony under the Madrid Accords, has been detaining Moroccan nationals, some for the longest time in the world, despite the UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.

Previous Stories:
  Mexican president supports UN efforts to settle Sahara dispute   (2/14/2005)
  It is unacceptable Moroccans continue to be held for such a long time by Polisario, AI official   (2/14/2005)
  Moroccan MPs urge British peers to help release prisoners in Tindouf   (2/9/2005)

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