Vol. 74/No. 2      January 18, 2010

Haidar was arrested November 13 at the airport as she attempted to return to Western Sahara from an awards ceremony in New York. Her passport was confiscated and she was expelled from Western Sahara, forced onto a plane that landed at the Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands, a Spanish possession.

Morocco’s regime has occupied Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony with rich phosphate and iron ore deposits, since 1975. The Polisario Front fought a war for independence from 1976 until 1991.

That war ended when the Moroccan government agreed to a UN-sponsored referendum on self-determination for the Sahrawi people. But since then, the Moroccan regime has blocked carrying out the accord and instead is pushing an “autonomy” plan.

The Socialist Party government of Spain tried to get Haidar to end her hunger strike and accept forced exile in Spain, but she refused. She won support in Spain and internationally for her right to return to Western Sahara, embarrassing Madrid.

The Moroccan ambassador to Spain, Omar Azziman, said in a press conference that the signing of a Morocco-Spain trade pact two days before “had nothing to do” with the agreement to allow Haidar to return home.

Azziman noted that a press release on Haidar’s return by Spanish president Luis Zapatero recognized that “Moroccan law applies to the Western Sahara.”

Moroccan police broke up a demonstration by hundreds of people in front of Haidar’s home in El Aaiún, celebrating her return. Made up mostly of women and children, they chanted slogans in support of the Polisario Front and self-determination for Western Sahara, reported El País.

There were similar demonstrations in the downtown neighborhood of Matallah and working-class suburbs of Bucráa, Skaikima, and Mesuar, the paper said.

Haidar condemned the Spanish statement recognizing Moroccan law in Western Sahara. “That’s against international law,” Haidar told the press from her home. “Spain is responsible for the territory because it withdrew before carrying out the decolonization of the Western Sahara.”  
 
 
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