Polisario camp's survivor recounts detention plight

Rachid Ghaleb, a Moroccan soldier who was imprisoned by the Polisario before managing to flee last January, recounts the plight of Moroccans detained by the Polisario and cruelty that does not spare even the dead, who are denied Muslims rite sepulture and are buried in waste dumps.

The serviceman who was interviewed by "L'Opinion" daily describes his plight in the Tindouf camps (southwestern Algeria) and how he ran away. He says that prisoners are interrogated any time and repeatedly. During questioning, they are stripped off their clothes in a very cold weather, especially in the roofless jails.

After questioning, he recalls, the Polisario would take prisoners to relatively clean underground cells to show to the Red Cross that they are treating them like prisoners of war ought to be treated. The same is done when reporters visit the camps, but after the visitors' departure, the prisoners are stripped off shoes and clothes and are beaten without any reason, he says.

The Tindouf camp survivor also recounts how death certificates are forged and how Moroccan physicians held in these camps are forced to write that death is due to a chronic disease.

For Ghaleb, who was made prisoners in April 1987, escaping the camp was a military duty that he would accomplish at the appropriate time without harming the other detainees. With the help of a camp supervisor whom he corrupted, the serviceman fled and helped another prisoner go to Mauritania.

A total of 1,160 Moroccans are held in the Polisario detention camps in southwestern Algeria, some of them are considered by the International Committee of the Red Cross as the world's oldest prisoners of war.