The Executive Office of the Moroccan League for Citizenship and Human Rights (LMCDH) condemned the Polisario Front’s kidnapping of a Sahrawi woman from the Tindouf camps after she protested a Polisario attack on her shop.
The Executive Office alleged, based on information received from human rights sources, that members of the Polisario militia besieged the woman’s shop, violating among other things her right to engage in commerce under the UN Charter.
Unable to seek a remedy before the Algerian judiciary, Mahmouda Ahmida Said staged a sit-in in a tent in front of the Polisario’s headquarters, and then was abducted by members of the armed organization.
Sahrawis detained in the camps are not allowed access to the Algerian judiciary or to file complaints with Algerian institutions, including the so-called Algerian Human Rights Council due to Algeria’s complete delegation of all judicial and security functions in the jurisdiction to the Polisario armed organization.
In its statement, the Executive Office LMCDH declared its full and unconditional support for Said’s demands and her “struggle against the might of the Polisario militias, politically supported and armed by the Algerian military regime, which bears responsibility for the physical safety of Mahmouda Ahmida Said.”
The LMCDH called upon the Algerian Human Rights Council to intervene to ensure that the detainees in Tindouf are not subjected to widespread and comprehensive violations of their rights, especially in the absence of any of the usual judicial processes or other means of redress.
It also called on the United Nations to supervise a general census of the detainees in the Tindouf camps, as recommended by several international human rights bodies.
The LMCDH also urged the Moroccan government and parliament to designate the Polisario as a “terrorist organization that threatens peace and stability in the region.”