Eighteen Sahrawi separatists, imprisoned in Morocco since 2010, filed a complaint with the UN group, against Morocco, for arbitrary detention. These people are accused of murdering members of the security forces in the so-called “Gdim Izik” case, named after the camp where eleven Moroccan police and gendarmes were killed at the time near the territory of Laâyoune, administered by Morocco, since the end of Spanish colonization.
According to the support group for these detainees, “Sahrawis who campaign for self-determination are subject to discriminatory practices and have been sentenced to long prison terms on the basis of confessions extracted under torture”.
Joined by RFI, Oulfa Ouled, lawyer at the Paris bar in charge of the defense of detainees of Gdim Izik, confirms the filing of this complaint for arbitrary detention: “This is the second time that the seizure of the group on arbitrary detention intervenes in this case. The reason is very simple since this same group had issued an opinion in 2013 indicating that the detention of the detainees of the Gdeim Izik group was totally arbitrary. What has happened since is that you have effectively the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Rabat which intervened in July 2017 and, on the defense side, we have always considered that this judgment did not respond to the criticisms of the group on arbitrary detention since there has never been a formal investigation opened into the acts of torture, despite the fact that prisoners constantly denounced them. What we obviously expect from the group on arbitrary detention is that it come and confirm its opinion of 2013 and tell us that, despite the presence of the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Rabat, we are still in the context of arbitrary detention”.
