Spanish lawyers Inés Miranda and Lola Travieso, commissioned by the General Council of Spanish Lawyers to cover an observation mission on the human rights situation in Western Sahara, have been expelled by Morocco, preventing them from carrying out their work. The International Association of Jurists has denounced this situation in a statement that they have sent to the newspaper EL MUNDO.
Miranda and Travieso have recorded a video on the plane that was returning them to Spain, denouncing the arrest and the violation of the right to free movement.
As explained by the association in the statement, the lawyers have been expelled from El Aiún by the Moroccan security forces “without there being any kind of cause that justifies it.”
They were traveling on a flight from the Canary Islands to El Aiún on an observation mission endorsed by the Spanish Lawyers. But when they were about to leave the aircraft, the Moroccan security forces even denied them the right to leave the plane. Both have identified themselves as members of the International Association of Jurists for Western Sahara and have shown their letters of introduction to the Moroccan gendarmes, but have not received any response other than the immediate expulsion from Saharawi territory.
The lawyers traveled to Western Sahara in order to investigate allegations of “serious violations” of human rights made by activists and relatives of Saharawi political prisoners allegedly perpetrated by members of the Moroccan forces.
It should be noted that Western Sahara is on the United Nations list of territories pending decolonization and that Pedro Sánchez turned around Spain’s historic neutrality over the Sahara a year ago, when he accepted Morocco’s conditions on the territory.
Sánchez supported for the first time that the Sahara be an autonomous province of Morocco and considered the Moroccan plan as “the most serious, credible and realistic basis for resolving this dispute.”
Since then, the PSOE has also been against nationalizing Spaniards born in colonial times. Spain, which is the one that manages the airspace of the Sahara, is currently negotiating with Morocco the shared management of some airspaces.
Despite the change in Sánchez’s policy, the kingdom of Mohamed VI has once again starred in a new controversy with the arrest of these two lawyers.
A week ago, Rabat also protested before the European Union for the comments on the Spanish sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla, territories that Morocco considers occupied.
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