| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa North |
| Sahrawis sentenced to jail over Western Sahara killings |
| 2017-07-20 |
| [Al Jazeera] A Morocco court has sentenced 23 civilians to prison terms ranging from two years to life over the killing of 11 members of the Moroccan security forces in contested Western Sahara. A verdict was delivered at dawn on Wednesday by the Court of Appeals in Sale near Rabat, the official news agency MAP reported. The defendants and lawyers have boycotted court proceedings since May, announcing they would no longer attend what they said was a "mock trial". The killings took place in November 2010 as Moroccan forces moved to dismantle a camp in Gdim Izik camp where thousands of displaced Western Saharans, known as Sahrawis, were living. Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front independence movement have accused each other of provoking the deadly festivities, which spread to a nearby city where businesses and public buildings were looted and torched. The defence has 10 days to appeal. The defendants, who include several advocates of human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... and independence for Western Sahara, were initially tried by a military court in 2013, and sentenced to jail terms ranging from 20 years to life imprisonment. |
| Posted by:Fred |