The Party of the European Left denounced the sentence issued by a military court in Rabat against the 24 prisoners processed   after their arrest in the evacuation of the “Camp of the Dignity” the past 8th of November 2010. The Moroccan military tribunal has ruled life imprisonment for 9 of them, imprisonment of 30 years to four, 25-year prison for eight and 20 years for other two. And it remains to define the  sentence that they will apply to two other accused and that will be decided on the basis of the duration of preventive detention, as it is been reported by the Moroccan news agency, MAP.

This is the sentence pronounced by the Moroccan King Mohammed VI against 24 Saharawis  arrested  during the eviction of the Gdeim Izik camp, known as Camp of Dignity, in which at the end of 2010 some 40.000 Saharans rose more than 3.000 tents on the outskirts of El Aaiún, in the occupied Western Sahara in demand of the political, economic and social rights, such basic rights as that of housing, employment and the control of their natural resources.

In the brutal eviction of the camp by the Moroccan security forces, were arrested, hundreds of persons, 24 of them have been detained for 27 months awaiting trial. These are the 24 convicted during this pantomime military judicial held during the last two weeks in Morocco. The Saharawis were charged as members of a criminal gang, by violence against the forces of order resulting in deaths, and by interference in the internal and external security of the State. They have been also alleged to detain, against their will, tens of thousands of Saharans who raised their tents in the protest camp.

During their detention, the prisoners were subjected to accredited torture and rape, so their statements lack any validity.

In the clashes produced during the eviction, 11 Moroccans and 3 Saharawis lost their lives. Among the last ones, a 14-year-old boy who was shot dead inside of the family car, and a Spanish origin Moroccan, but none of these homicides are under investigation.

The Party of the European Left complaints that Morocco does not have jurisdiction over the area, since it is an occupying force, what means that this military trial is inconceivable for the international law. Jurisdiction in the occupied Western Sahara corresponds to United Nations.

A  delegation of the Party of European Left visited the Saharawi refugee camps three months ago, within its policy of support to the Saharawi people and denounce of violation of human rights affecting the inhabitants of the former Spanish colony.

The Party of the European Left  calls for release of all Saharawi political prisoners detained in Moroccan jails and demands the fulfilment of the resolutions adopted by the UN about the autodermination of the Sahara.

Party of the European Left
Brussels, February 17, 2013