Former deportee in Cuba tells bitter stories of despicable torture

Saadani Maalainine, a Sahrawi woman who was deported by the Polisario separatist group to Cuba at the age of five, told participants in a conference held over the week end "commitment for liberty" her bitter experience with polisario leadership and conditions of her deportation.

Saadani, who remained in Cuba for nineteen years, said she was deported after she saw her father, who was among the first people to fight against the Spanish occupation, being tortured and humiliated.

He was tortured and beaten in public and "his face was savagely disfigured," before he was imprisoned with thousands others because they did not want their fight against the (Spanish) occupation to turn into a war against the homeland, she recounts.

The Algeria-backed secessionist group "Polisario" is claiming the independence of the Moroccan Sahara, a former Spanish colony retrieved by Morocco in 1975.

Saadani had no contact or news about her parents during the two decades of her deportation. It is only after she returned to the camps that she knew that her father had died in prison.

"I promised then to devote my life to denouncing the Polisario regime and the gulag where thousands of Moroccan captives are buried alive in southern Algeria," she said.

Saadani who returned to Morocco last year said she considers herself lucky because she managed to flee the camps and return to her homeland, urging for an intensification of efforts for the release all the people held by the Polisario.

For her part, Kaltoum Khayat, a former Polisario official, said "women and children are the first victims" of the separatists' actions. "These women lose all kind of contact with their children for years and when they finally return to the camps, Polisario confiscates their diplomas to dissuade them from returning to Morocco," added Khayat who returned to Morocco last July.