Morocco arrests two Western Saharan students on train for expressing opinions
29/10/2009 | Information-Update
It is expected that the two arrested Sahrawi students will be accused of ‘insulting sacred doctrines’ when they appear in front of the Court of First Instance.
Tumi Baba Ali is a Sahrawi student doing his Master’s degree at the Moroccan University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Fez. The other detained student is Abdullah al-Daihani, a PhD candidate in history from the same university.
Both were engaged on a discussion on the issue of Western Sahara with a staff member of the Royal Palace who was sitting with them in the same train compartment. After failing to convince them of his thesis, he opted to insult and ridicule the two Sahrawis. He called the Sahrawis bad names and said that they should put an end to the rise of what he called ‘a sense of the separatism’. He accused the students of insulting Morocco and the King.
Minutes later, he made a phone call. To their surprise, the two Sahrawi students found few security contingent waiting for them at the train station in Casablanca (Casa Voyageurs).
ASVDH believes that this arbitrary and baseless arrest comes in the context of an aggressive, repressive campaign led by the Moroccan authorities to turn the Moroccan public opinion against Sahrawi activists and intellectuals who are seen as a challenge to the official Moroccan version of the dispute over this region.
El-Aaiun – Western Sahara
October 28, 2009
