Freedom of Gdeim Izik Group and all political Saharawi prisoners

Campaign for the liberation of the Gdeim Izik Group and all the Saharawi political prisoners

The Kingdom of Morocco has decided to prosecute 24 Sahrawis of the Gdeim Izik Group by a civil court, next 26 December 2016, in Rabat, the capital of the kingdom. They had been condemned by a military court to barely up to life, on February 18, 2012. This is another illegal decision because it is not responding to the law, for breaching the Geneva Conventions ratified by the Moroccan State[1], or to the injustice suffered for more than 5 ½ years in violation of International Human Rights Law, which, like the previous military trial, will be plagued by irregularities and lack of the most elementary procedural guarantees.

Facing this new simulacrum, the Association of Relatives of Saharawi Prisoners and Disappeared (AFAPREDESA) launches an urgent appeal for the release of the 21 Saharawis still in arbitrary detention since their kidnapping in connection with the violent dismantling, on November 8, 2010, the camp of Gdeim Izik, where more than 20,000 Saharawis had been grouped 12 kilometers from El Aaiún to claim social and civil rights.

AFAPREDESA demands immediate and unconditional release of this group as all Saharawi political prisoners in Moroccan prisons.

AFAPREDESA requests the massive presence of international observers in this illegal Moroccan trial against human rights activists and defenders.

AFAPREDESA calls for the intervention of the UN, the AU, the EU, political parties, human rights organizations and civil society for the release of all Saharawi political prisoners as well as support and solidarity actions with thim.

Enough of repression and human rights violations in the occupied territories of Western Sahara!

AFAPREDESA will inform national and international opinion about the trajectory of these human rights activists and defenders recognized for their defense of human rights and freedom in Western Sahara:

Abdelah Abhah

Abdelah Abhah was born in 1980 in Aaiun. Worker. He is a well-known activist for the rights of the Saharawi workers and for the self-determination of the Saharawi people. He had participated in numerous demonstrations and sittings demanding the release of Saharawi political prisoners, clarification of the whereabouts of the Saharawi disappeared, the end of the occupation and the extension of the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) to human rights. He joined the demonstration of Gdeim Izik to claim that the Saharawi people can benefit from the natural resources that Morocco expelled with the complicity of international actors, including Spain, France and the European Union itself. He was kidnapped on November 19, 2010 in Aaiún. He was subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Sentenced to life imprisonment by a military tribunal in Rabat on 18 February 2012. Because torture, deprived conditions of detention, lack of medical care and numerous strikes carried out to date, he suffer from acute pain at the level of the back and joints and spinal column, he suffer also rheumatism and kidney diseases. It is currently in the Aarajat jail, 6 km from Salé (Morocco). 

Family  appeal for release all saharawi prisoners:

Mother of Abdelah Abhah and his niece

"TO SEE THEM FREE FINALLY WITH THEIR FAMILIES"

Translation to inglesh of the Testimony of Jadu niece Adellah Abhah:

Https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_IEhVj8nvf1bEpYcXZvTW9NMm8/view

 "... -from 0mn17s- I am niece of Abdelah Abhah. He is my uncle, one of the group of Gdeim Izik in the Moroccan prisons. I have been since 2005, more or less, without seeing him. I have come here to see, more or less, how these people are suffring  under Moroccan occupation. It's worse than I thought. It is even worse than what we see on television and what we hear. Despite the suffering of prisoners in prisons, there is also the suffering of families. For example, my grandmother has never been to visit her son.  He is already 3 years in jail. She is very sick, she would like to see him as any mother but there are many circumstances, many problems, let him does not  visiting his son. I also would like to visit my uncle and can not, she can hardly walk and because to many other problems that prevent us from going to see him. But, thank very much to all the associations that are with us, that support us, near or far, to all those people who are with us. I hope that they will continue fighting with us to see my uncle and together with all those Saharawi prisoners in the Moroccan prisons, to see them finally free with their families. Thank you…"

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[1] Article 76 - Treatment of detainees

Protected persons charged shall be detained in the occupied country and, if convicted, shall be punished there. They shall be separated, if possible, from the other detainees and subjected to a sufficient dietary and hygienic regime to maintain them in good health and corresponding at least to the regime of the penitentiary establishments of the occupied country. IV GENEVA CONVENTION https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/treaty/treaty-gc-4-5tdkyk.htm