See an account of the January 2017 court case against Saharawi activists at the Moroccan court in Salé.
The Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara wrote on 29 January 2017 how the court case against 25 Saharaws had been postponed until 13 March.
The group was sentenced in 2013 to 20 years to life by a Moroccan military court for crimes that was said to have been committed in 2010. No proofs were presented and all were sentenced based on confessions signed under torture.
Approximately 40 Norwegian observers participated on the trial 23-25 January 2017. Law student Tone Sørfonn Moe from Bergen has authored a long observation report about the court case.
Download the report in its entirety here.
The report documents clear violations on basic legal standards. Several of the convicted are leading human rights defenders in Western Sahara.
They were beaten with batons until they nearly lost consciousness and threatened with rape if they did not confess. This is the testimony of recently released Sahrawi students in a new report following a decade in Moroccan prisons.
The Moroccan film festival Dakhla International Film Festival is rapidly deleting critical comments from its social media channels.