Banjul (The Gambia) 11 May 2025 (SPS) – The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic strongly condemned the treatment of Sahrawi political prisoners in Moroccan detention centers, calling it a deliberate policy of repression carried out with impunity, in direct violation of international law.
Speaking before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Sahrawi delegate to the Session, Ambassador Malainin Lakhal, expressed appreciation for the report presented by the Special Rapporteur on Prisons, Conditions of Detention and Policing in Africa, commending its focus on the suffering endured by human rights defenders, civil society activists, and political figures across the continent.
He warned, however, that within this broader picture lies the specific and urgent case of Sahrawi political prisoners, subjected to “ongoing, systematic abuse” in Moroccan prisons. These abuses, he said, are not isolated incidents but a “deliberate and consistent policy of repression, dehumanization, and control,” carried out in defiance of the UN's Nelson Mandela Rules, Morocco’s own prison laws, and the 4th Geneva Convention.
The SADR reminded the Commission that Western Sahara remains, in the view of the United Nations, a territory under illegal Moroccan occupation and one that is yet to be decolonized.
The intervention highlighted the cases of several Sahrawi political prisoners, who were identified by relevant UN’s human rights mechanisms as prisoners of conscience targeted for their advocacy for Sahrawi self-determination.
Torture against Sahrawi detainees, Ambassador Malainin said, is “a confirmed reality acknowledged by the UN Committee Against Torture.” The statement described methods including beatings, suffocation, electric shocks, sexual assault, and psychological torture such as death threats and denial of human contact. It also emphasized the denial of medical care for injured prisoners.
The statement further described the dire conditions in prisons such as Tiflet 2, where both Haddi and Abbahah have been held in prolonged solitary confinement since 2018. Families are regularly denied visitation, and legal counsel is obstructed—violating the detainees’ right to defense.
According to the statement, the physical conditions of imprisonment amount to slow torture. Cells are mold-infested, humid, poorly ventilated, and permanently dark. Insect and vermin infestations are common, water is limited and contaminated, and food is nutritionally poor and deliberately restricted to induce exhaustion. “These are not systemic failures but the system itself,” the statement declared.
The Sahrawi Republic drew parallels between the current treatment of Sahrawi prisoners and the torture experienced by African liberation fighters under colonial rule. It accused Morocco of continuing “that same system of colonial violence,” enabled by the complicity of certain allies who help conceal these abuses and whitewash Morocco’s human rights image.
Concluding the intervention, the SADR denounced these violations as “crimes against dignity and law,” calling for attention and action from African human rights organizations and activists. (SPS)
090/500/60 (SPS)
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