Western Sahara News

My name is Isabel Maria Gonçalves da Silva Tavares Lourenço, I have Portuguese nationality, and am a member of Fundación Sahara Occidental and Adala UK. I visited Western Sahara and Morocco with an accreditation of Fundación Sahara Occidental as international observer and with a mandate from Adala UK. The goal of the visit was to attend as an international observer the judicial appeals of the Saharawi political prisoners Mr. Abdelmotalib Sarir, Mr. Mohamed Barber and Mr. Alyien Moussaoui on the 28th of October 2014 in Laayoune’s court of appeal, and that of Mr. Abdallahi Boukioud on 3rd of November 2014 in Agadir. A second goal was to observe the situation in Laayoune as well as talking to several Saharawi NGOs and families of political prisoners. During the week of 28th October to 2nd November 2014 I stayed in Laayoune city and interviewed and contacted several Saharawi human rights associations, committees and activists as well associations for the defence of n...

My name is Raabub Mohamed Lamin Mehdi, I am Medical Specialist in Internal Medicine, I perform the function of deputy in Osakidetza (Servicio Vasco de Salud), Collegiate number: 011 304 807, of Spanish nationality , ID number 06287946E  Through this letter I want to express my concern with the health of the patient Sidi Abdejalil Laaroussi, prisoner number 78608, Saharawi political prisoner, detained in prison Salé1, Rabat in Morocco, that has conveyed to me his situation  Personal history:  Apparently healthy, sporty and non-smoking, married with 2 children, had no complaints prior to his arrest.  After his arrest he was tortured on several occasions, these torture includes violent blows throughout the body, legs and knees causing rupture of ligaments, inhalation of chemicals causing problems to his eyes, blows in the lumbar area, was for more than 4 days naked blindfolded and handcuffed, forced to sleep on his own excrement, suspended from a wood...

Publically the language is impeccable. Members of the Spanish Government and diplomats show, with rare exception, an exquisie neutrality when they speak about the conflict in Western Sahara which face since 39 years Morocco and Polisario Front, backed by Algeria. The Spanish president Mariano Rajoy was, for example, a model of impartiality when he received UN Secretary General in Madrid in April 2013. However, underhand, Spanish diplomacy supports Morocco and its autonomy proposal, formulated in 2007 for the territory that was colonized by Spain until 1975. The cables of US State Department, unveiled in 2010 by Wikileaks, and showed, for example, then Ambassador of Spain in Morocco, Luis Planas, offering help to the Moroccan authorities to elaborate their autonomy offer for Western Sahara. Now the Moroccan Wikileaks provides new data. Since early October, hundreds of confidential documents of the Moroccan diplomacy are being unveiled by Chris Coleman, a fake Twitter profile....

According to documents released by the Moroccan hacker Chris Coleman, the information flowed smoothly between some French and the editor of L'Observateur du Maroc, Ahmed Charai, which is turn reported to Mourad El Ghoul, Director of Cabinet Yassine Mansouri, head of the Moroccan DGED. They worked as L'Observateur du Maroc collaborators to cover other activities they carried out for the Moroccan intelligence service. -Among these activities, relaying the propaganda of Morocco to improve the image of King Mohammed VI. In this area, Vincent Hervouet was a real working spy of all publications appeared in France against the King of Morocco and his country. On 01/03/2012, he sent an "urgent" message and requesting a "receipt" in which he reported that "the book by Eric Laurent on Your King finds an echo in Paris and guy make outright campaign. He talks about physical threats through anonymous messages, incredible! ". When the book came out ...

A document leaked by the Moroccan whistle-blower twitter account demonstrates how Morocco uses the Western Saharan natural resources to embroil other countries into its own illegal occupation of Western Sahara. The case at hand; Russia. On 21 November, the @chris_coleman24 twitter account, which has been leaking official Moroccan documents for some time now, published a document called " La Fédération de Russie at la question du Sahara Marocain " ("The Russian Federation and the question of the Moroccan Sahara") - a 6-page document devoted entirely to Morocco's geopolitical aim to convince Russia to side with Morocco when it comes to Western Sahara. Under the header "how to optimise Russia's position", the strategy is outlined. It reads as follows (translation from French to English by WSRW): "§39. To reach this objective, Morocco has to: a. renew, enrich and diversify its strategic partnership with Russia, the goal being...

A group of Moroccan human rights groups announced Monday they would boycott an international human rights conference being held in their country because of consistent government interference. The Moroccan Association of Human Rights, the country's most active and well known independent rights group, said they were initially invited to participate but then sidelined and excluded from the preparation for the 2nd World Forum for Human Rights. The statement, which was also signed by seven other organizations, described how calls to release detainees and end a crackdown on various groups was ignored, prompting the boycott. The move also comes after Interior Minister Mohammed Hassad railed against human rights groups in June, saying they sullied the reputation of security services by accusing them of torture. The New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement earlier this month November pointing out that the recent crackdown on human rights groups in Morocco, in...

Morocco decided, since the international community has imposed the good offices of the US veteran diplomat Christopher Ross as the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Western Sahara, to use all means to be stated an indispensable partner of the anti-terrorism at a time when its reputation was severely affected by several cyclical factors: - Cannabis trafficking, the barons acting under the orders of Morocco’s Makhzen, became one of the main sources of financing of the terrorist group Al Qaeda installed in Mali. - The failure of the so-called autonomy plan that was not given any consideration by the international community committed to the international law and UN resolutions, namely the principle of self-determination for Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory. - The fear of losing control of the resources of the former Spanish colony, the only way for Morocco to compete with Algeria at the regional leade...