25 Sahrawis jailed for killing Moroccan security forces

A Moroccan court has handed down sentences ranging between two and 25 years to 25 Sahrawis accused of killing 11 members of the Moroccan security forces in 2010.

The trial was opened in December before a civil court with the verdict delivered yesterday by the Criminal Chamber at the Court of Appeals in Salé, near the capital Rabat, according to the Moroccan News Agency.

The trial was named the “Gdeim Izik” trial after the internally displaced persons’ camp where the policemen and gendarmes were killed near the town of Laayoune in Western Sahara. Both Morocco and the Polisario Front accuse each other of having provoked the murderous clashes that broke out between police and Sahrawi demonstrators.

After a trial in a military court in 2013, the 25 defendants were sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Faced with protests from NGOs and relatives of the condemned, and following a reform of the Moroccan military justice system, the case was then referred to civil jurisdiction.

During the trial, both sides gave radically opposite versions of what happened in 2010.

Read: Morocco opens retrial of 25 Sahrawis accused of murdering 13

Moroccan authorities have reportedly made the Gdeim Izik trial as “transparent” and “fair” as possible by allowing access to press and international observers.

However the trial has received criticism. In mid-May, the accused and their defence withdrew from the trial to denounce “irregularities” and have since refused to appear.

The Action of Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) lambasted the trial as “unfair”, denouncing the “confessions signed under torture”.

Yesterday, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for “ensuring” that judgments “are not based on confessions … extracted under torture or ill-treatment during police interrogations.”

Western Sahara has been a contested territory for the last 42 years with Morocco arguing it should be under its sovereignty and the Polisario Front fighting for the independence of the Sahrawi people since 1976.

Over the weekend, the Polisario Front reportedly arrested 19 Moroccan civilians for transporting “pockets of hashish”, the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reported. This is the first time that the Saharawi organisation has detained Moroccan civilians.

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The arrest of civilians took place in the region of Agchan Labiad, Guelta Zemmour “as part of SADR’s efforts to deal with Morocco’s policies of flooding the region with drugs “, according to a statement issued by the Polisario.

The 19 Moroccans are accused of serving as “mules, passing packets of hashish through the Moroccan military wall” and are “awaiting trial” in an undisclosed location.

The Polisario have warned Morocco of “supporting gangs of criminals” and “against the negative consequences on peace and stability in the region”.