The decision has shocked Taqui Barkett ´s family, who considers it unfair, and due to the fact that the killers are moroccans and one Saharawi the victim.

On 23rd January,2011, in the morning, on the avenue Hassan II in Tan Tan, southern Morocco, four men of moroccan origin had monitored the Saharawi citizen of 30 years to steal his car. Taqui Barkett had defended himself, but according to witnesses, one of the attackers stabbed him with a knife and its partners had hit him on the head with stones.
The young Saharawi had died in hospital the same day.

Since the court sentence, the family tried to contact Taqui Barkett ´s lawyer, Mr. Mohamed Bensaidi ,to get the minutes of the trial but he refused to answer and seems to ignore the case.

This ruling is a new discriminatory verdict from moroccan courts, severely condemning the Saharawis responsible for criminal acts against the moroccans, and are much more lenient for moroccans responsible for criminal acts against the Saharawis.
ASVDH, January 28, 2012
El Aaiún, Western Sahara

Saharawis’ lives and physical safety are in danger, their houses raided and private and public property burned. The military has sealed off the road to Dakhla, thereby obstructing the media so as to hide the serious crimes committed with impunity by the Moroccan intelligence services and armed militias. This Moroccan aggression is rooted in racism, and has resulted in dozens of casualties among Saharawi, who try to flee the city to save their lives.

We note that the Moroccan authorities attempt to distort the facts on the events in Dakhla, as they have done many times before when they’ve also supported the armed militias in attacking Saharawi civilians and their properties.

As a result, the Saharawi Human rights NGOs and committees wish to announce the following;

1. Our absolute solidarity with the victims of the vicious attacks perpetrated by the armed militias of the Alwakala neighbourhood and the Moroccan authorities’ agents.
2. Our condolences and solidarity with the family of the Saharawi martyr Maichane Mohamad Lamine Lahbib Echiaa, who has been kidnapped and beaten to death by the militias.
3. We denounce the Moroccan authorities’ attempts to distort the Dakhla reality, and misinform the local and international public opinion.
4. We demand the Moroccan government allow an independent and fair investigation into all the crimes committed by the armed militias and the Moroccan secret services against the Saharawi civilians in Dakhla, Western Sahara.
5. We call on the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Council to send an international commission to investigate the grave violations of human rights committed by armed militias backed by the Moroccan authorities.
6. We ask the international community, NGOs and all the free voices to immediately act on the following:
a. Respect for human rights in Western Sahara, including the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination. The political conflict and the military siege in Western Sahara must end.
b. Work for a UN mechanism to protect the Saharawi civilians and report on the human rights situation in Western Sahara.
c. An immediate response to the Saharawi civilians’ demand to be protected from the armed militias and repression by the Moroccan state.
d. Increase pressure on Morocco to:
i. Clarify the fate of abducted Saharawi;
ii. Release all the Saharawi political prisoners;
iii. Guarantee civil, political, economical, social and cultural rights for the Saharawi people, including their right to benefit from their natural resources.

Western Sahara, 29 September 2011

Signed by:
- Family of the Saharawi martyr Said Dambar
- CODESA (Collective of Saharawi Human Rights Defender)
- ASVDH (Saharawi association for victims of grave human rights violations committed by the Moroccan state)
- CODAPSO (Saharawi Committee to Defend Self-Determination)
- CSPRON (Saharawi committee for UN settlement plan and protection of Natural resources of Western Sahara)
- Gdeim Izik Coordination Committee
- Victims of enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrest in the Sahara
- Committee to Defend the Public Freedom and Human Rights in Western Sahara
- Saharawi Association to Protect Prisoners
- Saharawi Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Smara, Western Sahara
- Organisation against Torture in Dakhla, Western Sahara
- Committee of families of kidnapped Saharawi
- FAFESA, Forum of Future for the Saharawi Women in Western Sahara
- Committee of Mothers of the 15 disappeared Saharawi
- Saharawi Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Glaimim, South Morocco
- Freedom Sun for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Western Sahara
- Saharawi Centre to Protect the Collective Memory

Morocco: Sahrawi Activists, Detained 18 Months, Await Verdict
Trial Delays, Limited Evidence Raise Concerns of Politically Motivated Prosecution
April 8, 2011

(New York) – Three Western Sahara activists have been in pretrial detention for 18 months, with numerous delays in their trial, Human Rights Watch said today. Their trial on charges of « harming [Morocco's] internal security » has proceeded in fits and starts, with limited evidence produced against them. Four co-defendants are provisionally free.

The police arrested the six men and one woman on October 8, 2009, upon their return from visiting the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. Unlike previous low-profile family visits by Sahrawis from the disputed, Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara to the refugee camps, this delegation openly met there with officials of the Polisario, the Sahrawi independence movement that runs a government-in-exile and administers the camps.

« The court trying the seven Sahrawi activists should without any further delay issue a verdict that properly presents the evidence and reasoning behind the verdict, » said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

The seven defendants were initially under investigation by a military court investigative judge on charges that they had « undermined external state security. » The military court judge finally referred the case to a civilian court for them to face trial on the lesser charge of harming internal security.

Brahim Dahane, Ali Salem Tamek, and Ahmed Naciri remain in jail while Degja Lachgar, Yahdih Etarrouzi, Rachid Sghaier, and Saleh Lebaihi are provisionally free.

The trial began on October 15, 2010, a year after their arrest, but the First Instance Court of Aïn Sbaâ immediately postponed it because the authorities had failed to transport the three detained defendants from prison to the courtroom. The court postponed the trial on November 5 for another six weeks after a large contingent of pro-Moroccan spectators in and around the courtroom shouted slogans and assaulted Sahrawi activists and Spanish journalists attending the session.

The hearings finally got under way on December 17 and continued on January 7 and 14, 2011. The judge said the court would announce its verdict on January 28. But instead, the court decided to summon two additional witnesses, Mohamed Elmoutaouakil and Aïcha Dahane.

The case revolved in part around accusations that while in Algeria the defendants had received money for unlawful purposes. Some of them acknowledged receiving money while in Algeria but said it was only a small amount to cover their travel expenses. Other defendants denied receiving money while in Algeria and said that Elmoutaouakil and Dahane had given them the money in their possession. Elmoutaouakil, a Sahrawi activist living in Casablanca, and Dahane, Brahim Dahane’s sister, testified on March 4 and March 25 respectively. On March 28, the three detained defendants appeared again before the judge. No new date for the verdict has been announced.

The prosecution has sought to show that the meetings held by the defendants while in Algeria, and money they allegedly received from sources there, constituted offenses under Article 206 of the Penal Code. That article stipulates:

A person who directly or indirectly receives from a foreign person or organization, gifts, loans, or other advantages, in any form, that are used or intended to be used, in whole or in part, to carry out or to pay for an activity or for propaganda in Morocco that could harm the integrity, sovereignty, or the independence of the Kingdom, or to shake the loyalty that citizens owe the State and the institutions of the Moroccan people, shall be guilty of harming the internal security of the state and punished by imprisonment from one to five years and a fine of 1000 to 10,000 dirhams [US$125 to 1,250].

The activists said in a statement on March 18, 2010, that their visit to Tindouf had been « for humanitarian and purely human rights reasons. » Etarrouzi and Sghaier told Human Rights Watch that the case file consisted only of broadcast and print media reports about the men being received by Polisario Front officials, and their own statements, in which they explained that their meetings in Algeria were to discuss political, humanitarian, and human rights issues.

Since the defendants’ trip in 2009 several other delegations of Sahrawi activists from Morocco or Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara have traveled to the Polisario-run refugee camps and have returned to Western Sahara without facing any legal repercussions.

The defendants all advocate self-determination for Western Sahara, a vast disputed territory that Morocco has administered de facto since seizing control of it in 1975, after Spain, the colonial power, withdrew. The Polisario Front favors a popular vote on self-determination, including the option of full independence, while Morocco proposes a measure of autonomy for the region but rejects independence as an option. Morocco and the Polisario, which Algeria supports, have engaged in fitful and so-far fruitless negotiations.

Morocco considers peaceful advocacy of independence, or even of a referendum where independence is one option, to be an attack on its « territorial integrity, » punishable by law. Tamek, Dahane, Etarrouzi, Sghaier, and Naciri have all been previously imprisoned by Morocco – along with hundreds of other Sahrawis – for pro-independence activities. Dahane and Lachgar are both former victims of forcible disappearance.

Tamek, Dahane, and Naciri remain in Salé Prison. All three are active in Sahrawi human rights organizations. Tamek, of El Ayoun, is vice president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA). Dahane, of El-Ayoun, is president of the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations (ASVDH). Naciri is vice-president of the Smara-based Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. Moroccan authorities have refused to grant legal recognition to CODESA and the ASVDH.

« The scant prosecution evidence and the inordinate delays in the trial while three defendants remain behind bars makes it that much more important for the court to hand down a prompt, fair, and well-reasoned verdict that does not penalize peaceful political activity, » Whitson said.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/08/morocco-sahrawi-activists-detained-18-months-await-verdict

The RFK Center finds evidence of escalating abuse, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment in Western Sahara
1/19/2011

WASHINGTON (January 18, 2011) – Torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, failure to follow criminal procedures, and repression of civilians by Moroccan government forces are all too common in Western Sahara, according to the findings of a recent visit to El Aaiun by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Western Sahara human rights leader Aminatou Haidar, recipient of the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, hosted the staff delegation from January 11 to 14 to examine human rights violations allegedly committed by Moroccan security forces against Sahrawis. The delegation included RFK Center Executive Director Lynn Delaney, Director of the Center for Human Rights Monika Kalra Varma, and Advocacy Officer Mary Beth Gallagher. Although the delegation’s ability to work or move freely was not impeded, the staff was under constant surveillance by both uniformed and undercover police.

Indications of repression, limitations on freedom of expression, and economic and social marginalization of Sahrawis, as well as state-sponsored violence, are emblematic of the human rights situation there. This context, in concert with the violence that broke out on November 8, 2010, when Moroccan security forces dismantled a camp set up by residents of Western Sahara to protest social and economic discrimination, reinforces the need for impartial international human rights monitoring. The RFK Center strongly condemns the violence committed on both sides surrounding the dismantling of the protest camps in November.

The RFK Center mission met with more than two dozen victims of abuse, torture, and imprisonment and their families during the trip, in addition to Moroccan government officials and representatives of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). “Human rights abuses have been ongoing, and the spike in violence resulting from the dismantling of the Gdyam Izik camp is alarming,” said Varma. “There are overwhelming indications of abuse, harassment, or torture both before and after the violence, and Aminatou Haidar and her fellow human rights defenders work at great personal risk in these conditions.”

“The fact that there is no international human rights monitoring mechanism as the situation worsens in Western Sahara is unacceptable,” stated Varma. The RFK Center has long called on the United Nations Security Council to add a human rights component to MINURSO to monitor the human rights situation in Western Sahara and the camps in Tindouf, Algeria.

“I hope that after the visit of the RFK Center to Western Sahara, the delegation will be able to shine a spotlight on the alarming human rights situation in the territory of Western Sahara, which is under Moroccan control,” said Haidar. “Strong support from the United States and the international community is needed to end the suffering of the Sahrawi people.”

The RFK Center will be issuing a report detailing its findings in the near future.

http://rfkcenter.org/press/rfk-center-finds-evidence-escalating-abuse-torture-and-arbitrary-imprisonment-western-sahara

Ahmed Nassiri

Ali Salem Tamek

Various security forces and severe restrictive measures were employed to prevent our families from entering the court building. Moreover, hundreds of Moroccan citizens and dozens of lawyers were mobilized to protest inside the court; they chanted racist and chauvinistic slogans, and physically attacked us and all other detainees, as well as our families, some members of the defence, international observers and journalists.

Given these dangerous incidents that demonstrate the lack of genuine will of the Moroccan state to fulfill the conditions for a fair trial;

We declare:
• Our strong condemnation of the Moroccan State’s behaviour in dealing with political trials.
• Our absolute condemnation of the public prosecutor and the court’s Chair for not taking any clear procedures to create the appropriate atmosphere by stopping these attacks, which demonstrates their approval and involvement.
• Our condemnation of the aggressive attitude of a group of Moroccan lawyers who should have defended our right to a legal trial.
• Our homage for the unconditional support we receive of all democrats in the world; from observers, journalists, lawyers and international, Moroccan and Saharawi human rights organizations.

➢ We demand:
• A fair trial that respects all the legal conditions
• Our conditions in the local prison of Casablanca ‘Okacha’ be improved, and our legitimate rights – currently taken from us – restored.

We decide to protest against all this by a limited hunger strike of 48 hour, starting on Tuesday 11 January 2011.

We call upon everybody to support us.

The Saharawi prisoners of conscience:
• Ali Salem Tamek, number of arrest 74067
• Brahim Dahane, number of arrest 74068
• Ahmad Nasiri, number of arrest 74069

Cell block 12, room N° 01, the local prison of Casablanca ‘Okacha’
09 January 2011

Izana Amidane, human rights defender, was abducted on the Al Irfan street in El Aaiun, Western Sahara, while participating with other women in a demonstration of solidarity with the family of Said Abdel Ouahab Damber, a Sahrawi citizen killed Thursday by Moroccan police bullets.

Sidi Ahmed Lmjayed, human rights defender and president of Committee for the Support of United Nations Resolution and the Protection of Natural Resources in Western Sahara (CSPRON) was kidnapped in broad daylight Without providing more details about the circumstances of his abduction.

The two activists have already suffered abductions and torture several times for their activities as human rights defenders and their political positions regarding the conflict of Western Sahara

El-Aiun Western Sahara
26 December 2010

Of the 24 activists who were returning today, eight of them have decided to stay in Casablanca. Among them Miss Kelthoum Lbsair member of the executive bureau of the Freedom Sun organization, which has been arrested in the airport of Casablanca by agents believed to be affiliated with Moroccan intelligence services. They led her into a room for questioning during an hour before taking her to an unknown destination.

Officers in the same service arrested the human rights activist Marym Bourhim, in the waiting room of the plane flight to El Aaiun, Western Sahara, before boarding. There is no news of her since her arrest at 15 o’clock.

A member of the delegation who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the Moroccan authorities had forced them to divide into two groups when it was expected that all travel on the same plane to El Aaiun in the afternoon.

El-Aiun Western Sahara
26.12.2010