Western Sahara rights activist jailed in Morocco - NGO

RABAT, Morocco: Ennama Asfari, the co-president of a Committee for the Respect of Freedoms in the Western Sahara, has been jailed for four months for insulting a policeman, a human rights group said on Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch said that a cousin of Ennama Asfari, Ali Roubiou, arrested during the same police check, was given a two-month suspended sentence in the trial on August 27.

According to the Moroccan news agency MAP, “the two accused refused to show their identity cards to police officers during a routine check on their way into a town.

Asfari, 39, who MAP said was a previous offender, was charged with “insulting a policeman in the exercise of his duty, assaulting police officers” and “refusing to show his vehicle’s papers.” Roubiou, 21, was accused of “refusing to present an identity card.”

In a statement, HRW said that Asfari had already been given a suspended jail term of two months in 2007, then was imprisoned for two months in 2008 after a trial “apparently inspired by the desire of the authorities to punish him for his political activities.”

Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa last week denounced “provocation by partisans of separatism [in the Western Sahara], who systematically break the law and are trying to politicize the process of common law in order to attract international sympathy for their separatist ideas.”

A former Spanish colony, the Western Sahara was annexed in 1975 by Morocco, which claims historical sovereignty of the colony and has proposed a plan for broad self-government, but no independence.

The Polisario Front, supported by neighboring Algeria, demands the independence of the territory and a referendum on self-determination.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=105977.