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Western Sahara: The United Nations Calls on Morocco to Release Sahrawi Prisoners

Morocco must release the prisoners of the Gdeim Izik group  โ€: this is the appeal launched by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD). In an opinion dated October 11, the Group concluded that the detention of several Sahrawi activists for 13 years in Moroccan prisons is illegal.

This is a โ€œ  great victory  โ€ for lawyers and activists for the independence of Western Sahara, who are now calling on the French authorities to work to obtain their release. The UN urged Morocco, in a note dated October 11, to release Sahrawi independence demonstrators, members of the so-called Gdeim Izik group, who had been found guilty of the murder of members of the security forces during the dismantling of the Gdeim Izik camp by Moroccan courts in 2013, and imprisoned since.

This opinion from the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detention is welcomed by Rรฉgine Villemont, president of the Association Solidarity and Political Support for the Polisario (AARASD). โ€œย  Itโ€™s something that dates back to October and which took a little time to come out of the working groupโ€™s pipeline, but itโ€™s indeed important because itโ€™s still a position taken clear and vigorous action on the part of the Working Group, on the part of Geneva and the Human Rights Council, in a way, to indicate to Morocco that these prisoners of Gdeim Izik were arrested under non-regular conditions and were tortured to confess to crimes they had not committed,โ€ reacts Rรฉgine Villemont at the microphone of Houda Ibrahim.

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โ€œ  There was first a trial at the military court, with an appeal, and all this in conditions of non-compliance with the usual rules of law for the detention of these 24 people. In addition, they were sentenced in 2013 to extremely heavy sentences, life imprisonment, 25 years, 30 yearsโ€ฆ Itโ€™s almost a lifetime,โ€ concludes Rรฉgine Villemont.

The 24 Sahrawis charged had been sentenced to sentences of up to life imprisonment. Already at that time, human rights defenders were crying out for the political trial of Sahrawi activists. By the end of 2022, a coalition of organizations and lawyers had filed six complaints of torture against Morocco with the United Nations committee against torture, on behalf of six of the prisoners.

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