Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat -Moroccan officials found two Spanish pro-Polisario activists in Laayoune who claimed that they were there for New Year’s Eve, according to Spanish news outlet El Espanol.
Both Patricia Ibanez and Irati Tobar were staying at the house of Hassana Alia, who was sentenced to life in prison by the Rabat military court in 2013 for his involvement in the Gdim Izik uprising.
In 2010, Sahrawis at the Gdim Izik camp, near Laayoune, clashed with Moroccan police, resulting in the death of 11 Moroccan officers and the injury of 70 others, including four civilians, as well as great property damage.
Alia is living in exile in Spain, having sought asylum there. Alia receives aid monthly from separatist human rights activists, along with other Polisario separatists, to spread the separatist ideology.
Ibanez told the Spanish news outlet that outside Alia’s house “there was a police van and another vehicle with tinted windows, and around the corner thay had a taxi waiting.”
Read Also: Pro-Polisario Activists Protest Moroccan Phosphate in New Zealand
Moroccan authorities sent the Spanish nationals to Agadir, explaining that they could visit the city but “not staying with a family. We tried to talk to them and explain, but there was no way,” Ibanez said.
Alia posted a photo of the two Spanish nationals, saying Morocco had expelled them.
Morocco sentenced 25 people for the Gdim Izik uprising of November 8, 2010 in the village of Gdim Izik, during which several Moroccans were brutally murdered, including 11 police officers.
A Moroccan military court sentenced the defendants to 20 years to life imprisonment. Some of them were sentenced in absentia. Later, a civilian court retried the case when Morocco reformed its judicial code so that military courts could not try civilians. The civilian court handed down the same sentences.
