El Fórum Canario Saharaui sigue demandando al Gobierno español explicaciones por la situación de Brahim Ghali
The Canary Saharawi Forum, through an official note, continues to demand convincing explanations from the Spanish government on the present situation of Brahim Ghali due to his entry and hospitalisation in Logroño. The organisation also points out in the statement that the wife of Fadel Breica, one of the claimants against the head of the Polisario Front, was assaulted in El Ayoun.
The official communiqué of the Saharawi Canarian Forum is given below:
Following the path of previous weeks, since the coming of Brahim Ghali to Logroño was announced and denounced, with the now well-known premeditation, night and premeditation, and without a hint of transparency or modesty on the part of our government, we are preparing to express our point of view on some of the issues that have occurred in recent days on the subject, by means of this communiqué.
To begin with, we continue to await - with increasing concern - the pertinent explanations that the Spanish Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and particularly the Minister Arancha González Laya must give on this murky affair, once the most delicate moments of the crisis in Ceuta have passed. To this end, we once again call on the other parties of the parliamentary arc to demand, through the corresponding commissions, the urgent appearance of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya in the parliamentary seat, to give the appropriate explanations and answer the corresponding questions on this case. It is absolutely essential to hear her explanation of the facts in the seat of national sovereignty. And it is absolutely essential that the government and the minister make the mandatory accountability to the public through this system, no longer hiding under the umbrella of the judicial proceedings in the Spanish National Court. This is particularly urgent in view of the turn of events in bilateral relations with Morocco.
On the other hand, we denounce the aggression suffered in El Aaiún by the wife of one of the complainants against Brahim Ghali, the Spanish citizen of Saharawi origin Fadel Breica, allegedly by Saharawis sympathetic to the Polisario. As well as the reprisals that relatives of members of the Saharawi Movement for Peace, opponent of the Polisario, are suffering in the Tindouf camps as far as the reception of their quota of humanitarian aid supplies is concerned. An infamous and inhuman act that must stop immediately.
We must also reprove how, once again, the Polisario representatives continue to entangle the case in the Spanish media and public opinion, with their usual ambiguities and half-truths in their statements. In this case, through one of Ghali's trusted men, Salem Lebsir. First, as several media reported a few days ago, the territorial delegate of the Polisario in La Rioja, Abdalahe Hamad, denied Lebsir's presence in Logroño, when in fact he was already in the hospital visiting Ghali. Secondly, for affirming in a cocky tone to the said media in reference to Ghali's appearance before the judge: "Why should he do so? Just because some pro-Moroccan supporters wanted him to? It's all lies. As soon as he recovers, which will be in 10 days, he will leave the country. He will not appear before the judge". The following day, it emerged that Ghali would indeed appear before the court by telematic means next June 1st.
Regardless of the content of these statements, mean and shameless towards the victims who are demanding justice in the Spanish National Court, trivialising claims if not denying them, this kind of arbitrary, unilateral and improvised way of proceeding is common among Polisario leaders, whose allegations are never known to be true or untrue.
It is not in vain that we should recall the lamentable attitude of their communication apparatus towards the Spanish media and journalists, including those closest to their positions, on the day the news of Ghali's arrival in Spain broke. From the time Ghali was in Algiers recovering from COVID until he made a stopover in Spain after passing through Germany, thus making an art of lying.
On the recent death by coronavirus of one of the defendants along with Ghali in the Spanish National Court, Sidahamed Batal, at the time another of the Polisario's historic black chronicles, and since he has left us after evading justice, we must highlight his abominable profile. He is acknowledged as one of the main torturers of the Polisario, as it appears in the same case against Ghali, and is considered by some Saharawis consulted as "the Saharawi equivalent of the Khmer Rouge's Duch". Years later, Batal was able to manage through his influence to obtain a Spanish passport, the country he punished so much, and even benefit from a pension for visual impairment.
However, the extent of his power did not allow him to receive the same treatment as his boss Brahim Ghali, as while the latter was successfully recovering from COVID (and perhaps other ailments) comfortably in a hospital in La Rioja, Batal died in the Tindouf camps. Batal did not set foot in Spain because of the same legal case as Ghali, but within the Polisario group there are different categories. In this sense, in the heat of these events, we witness once again the failure of the supposed egalitarian society that Polisario advocated from its origins, to the detriment of tribal inequalities and the perennial favourable treatment of the Polisario Front's leaders. All this is happening while its people are enduring endless hardship in the desert hell, now even more so with the aggravating factor of COVID-19, where some are more likely than others to survive depending on the position they hold or the rank they occupy in society.
Additionally, as regards privileges, it has recently become known that Ghali has hired the lawyer Manuel Ollé as his legal representative in his next appearance before the Spanish National Court. It is undoubtedly embarrassing to read his statements regarding Ghali's pending cases, referring to them with the same, or even greater contempt than the aforementioned Lebsir. His attitude is closer to that of a militant or activist than that of a legal professional.
We should not go into Mr. Ollé's lack of respect for the countless victims of his client, such as those resulting from the attacks on the Canarian fishermen and workers of Fos Bucraa murdered during the black decade under the command of the aforementioned Ghali, and taking as an example the most recent lawsuit filed in the Spanish National Court by Fadel Breica for illegal detention, torture and against humanity committed in the refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria); Mr. Ollé should perhaps be aware that, when he says that "the complainants, jumping on this unfair bandwagon of justice, relate facts lacking any minimal evidentiary support", the events described in Breica's complaint were not only denounced by organisations such as Human Rights Watch, through its deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Lama Fakih, but also by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, 7/2020, concerning El Fadel Breica" (A/HRC/WGAD/2020/7), details, among other conclusions over ten pages, that Mr. Breica "has been abducted, without being presented with an arrest warrant, without being informed of the reasons for his detention, and was not brought before a judge during the four months of his detention".
Mr. Ollé also stated in recent statements, among all kinds of nonsense, that "these types of complaints are unfounded because they are based on unfounded allegations (...) and were shelved by the Spanish High Court". At this point, the lawyer should not confuse his "militancy" or take it for foolishness, since it is well known that Breica's complaint was recently admitted for processing, and that of ASADEDH, as we reported in previous communiqués, was in a situation of provisional archiving, pending a rogatory commission sent to Algeria that was never going to arrive fulfilled, due to the patronage of these to the Polisario.
These statements, like those of Mr. Ollé, only highlight once again the obtuse and unconditional support - all for the cause, including human rights - that the Polisario Front has traditionally had in Spain, from various spheres (political, academic, etc.). A question, that of human rights violations, which both the Polisario and its Spanish friends and acolytes tend to deny or omit here, taking advantage of the widespread ignorance of public opinion on the matter, and on whose account the Polisario has won the battle in Spain for decades.
In this regard, we must point out that human rights violations have been committed in the Tindouf camps for as long as they have existed, by those who govern them against their own dissident population. But Spanish public opinion will never find out, because the construction of the narrative on the Sahara issue in Spain prevents it from assuming this reality, where the framework on this issue is well delimited on the other side, something that prevents even suggesting that those who have historically presented themselves as victims are also executioners. This also makes it easier for the media and Spanish public opinion in general to question something they believe does not exist. Which does not, however, mean that it does not exist. And it should be made clear that the Polisario Front and the Sahrawi people are not the same thing. It should also be recalled that the Tindouf refugee camps are opaque to scrutiny on this issue (Amnesty International: 2014, 2020), despite the insistence of their leaders in denouncing human rights transgressions by others (in this case Morocco). These are double standards.