July 2013 – A study tour of the Saharawi towns of southern Morocco and the occupied territory of Western Sahara has reported to MINURSO about their findings as human rights observers from France, Germany and Australia.

The main purpose of the tour was to test the right of Saharawi political prisoners to receive mail. Through the campaign “Write for their release” (Ecrirepourlesliberer.com), letters sent through the post are known not to reach them, so letters were brought to four prisons to deliver in person to the director of the prison. Only one accepted the letters and promised to pass them on to the prisoners.  The delegation also met the families of the prisoners and gave them a copy of the letter sent to their family member.

All the experiences of excessive surveillance, interference with the itinerary and the consequences visited upon Saharawis who receive international delegations are noted.

“We witnessed a whole people under siege, whose resistance is getting stronger even though Morocco’s repression continues”, said the leader of the delegation, Claude Mangin-Asfari, wife of Saharawi political prisoner, Enaâma Asfari, one of the Gdeim Izik group of prisoners.

Study tour report to MINURSO >>

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT, 12 September 2013

Revelations published this week by a Spanish team of forensic experts confirming the deaths of eight Sahrawis, including two children, who disappeared in 1976 and providing unprecedented evidence that they were extrajudicially executed by Moroccan armed forces underscore the continuing need to uncover the full truth about hundreds of cases of enforced disappearance from previous decades and to ensure justice for victims and their families. (…cont.)

Amnesty Public Statement  >>

MEHERIS: A possibility of hope – Mass graves and the first Sahrawi disappeared who have been identified
Carlos Martín Beristain, Francisco Etxeberria Gabilondo
Hegoa, Bilbao, Septemer 2013

The document contains the findings of a forensic and research team, working together with a genetic laboratory at the University of the Basque Country, on a case of Sahrawi missing persons in Fadret Leguiaa in the region of Samra, near Amgala and Meheris, in February 1976.
…..The issue of the disappeared during the armed conflict and violence against Sahrawi civilians is still present in the lives of their families (cont

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