RABAT, Morocco (AP) - Police in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara arrested three leading human rights campaigners on Sunday following weeks of crackdowns against students and activists in the territory, a human rights association said.Brahim Elansari, a member of the Saharawi Association for Human Rights Victims, was arrested Sunday afternoon after police stopped his car in Western Sahara's main city, Laayoune, said the organization's president, Brahim Dahane. Fellow activist Hassana Douihi, who was riding with Elansari, was also arrested.
Shortly afterward, police arrested Naama Asfari, president of the Paris-based Committee for the Respect of Human Freedoms and Rights in Western Sahara, Dahane said.
The three remained in police custody Sunday evening, said Dahane, adding that police had visited the homes of three other human rights activists seeking to arrest them, but that the men were not there.
For weeks, Moroccan authorities have been executing a crackdown in Western Sahara and at Moroccan universities against activists and Saharawis, students among the territory's native population. Dozens have been injured and arrested in the sweeps.
Moroccan authorities are targeting prominent Saharawis in an attempt to quell the growing pro-independence sentiment in Western Sahara, a desert territory invaded by Morocco in 1975 after Spain, the colonial power, withdrew, Dahane said. Most Saharawis favor independence and stage regular demonstrations, which police often put down.
The Polisario Front, an Algerian-backed independence movement, fought until the United Nations brokered a cease-fire in 1991 aimed at allowing an independence referendum, which never happened. Morocco rejects a referendum and has agreed to talk with Polisario under U.N. auspices about Western Sahara's future. The talks are expected to begin next month.