Moroccan police storm homes of Western Saharan activists
30/08/2010 | Newsletter
groupe european
Carmen Roger
Saturday around 18:15 p.m. gmt Moroccan police intervened against fourteen European activists, who came to El-Aaiun to protest against violations of human rights in Western Sahara. The protest took place outside the hotel Negjir where resident members of MINURSO. (United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara).
While the activists all are Spanish sang songs and slogans for the Sahara Libre, dozens of plainclothes police surrounded them, beat and kicked them before transferring to the headquarters of general information in the Prefecture of El-Aaiun, where they were interrogated.
After hours of interrogation, the Spanish have been delivered to the Casa Espana, then were returned Sunday night to the Canaries islands.
Police and intelligence services have increased in the first minutes of the event, and imposed a tight security cordon and prevented tens of Sahrawi citizens to join the Spaniards in the place of the event to support them.
Police stormed the homes of Sahrawis citizens and injured a number of them, among them the two old women, Ms Aziza Khatry and Salam Bouha Elmoudan.
Earlier on Saturday morning around 2am gmt, four Sahrawi women were seriously injured when a Mercedes car driven by a Moroccan policeman employed in the fourth district of El-Aaiun – Western Sahara.
According to Ms. Aziza, one of the four injured, the officer was drunk, and police have not established official report on the incident, but only transferred the man aboard an official vehicle. Mrs Aziza accuses the Moroccan policeman to have deliberately acted for racist reasons
