On the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the tragic events that occurred in the camps of Gdim Izik, which were taken hostage by criminals in the pay of the separatist front, leaving 11 dead among the Auxiliary Forces, the Royal Gendarmerie and the Civil Protection, the Coordination reiterates, in a statement, its call to the various human rights mechanisms to receive the families of the victims and listen to their suffering, especially after their requests were made for that purpose.
“We are surprised by some UN reports that undermine the right of real victims to justice and redress, which directly contradict the stipulation of international conventions and encourage impunity,” the Coordination said, denouncing some UN mechanisms’ allegations of “torture” against the detainees who committed these crimes, which flagrantly aim to help these criminals continue to benefit from impunity.
The Coordination called for preserving “the collective memory of the victims by making 8 November the Remembrance Day of their sacrifices, and building a memorial to honor them and a national museum to commemorate these tragic events.”
It also reiterated its demands to give more attention and offer help to the families of the victims, who are the martyrs of national duty.
This anniversary sheds light on the “crime against humanity flagrantly committed by the polisario militia group” gathered on Algerian territory, adding that “Algeria should not deny its humanitarian responsibility, because the perpetrators of this crime were trained on Algerian territory in Tindouf Camps and at the University of Boumerdes.”
As every year, this tragic anniversary is commemorated at a time the polisario militia group keeps altering the facts, by presenting the detainees following these tragic events as prisoners of opinion and expression, though they were proven guilty in a fair trial that respected all the conditions required by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Moroccan Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure, noted the Coordination.
It added that the militia’s maneuver attempts to circumvent the United Nations’ mechanisms for human rights by elaborating false reports that present the perpetrators of these criminal acts as human rights activists.
“These reports were instrumentalized by some Human Rights Council mechanisms to issue politicized reports that undermine the right of victims to justice and ignore all the requirements for a fair trial guaranteed to the perpetrators, starting from their appearance before the King’s Prosecutor and the investigating judge in the presence of their legal counsels, be it in the military court or the civil court after the amendment of the Code of the Military Justice,” the statement explained.
During this trial, the perpetrators fully benefited from their fair trial rights, namely the right to legal counseling and defense, the coordination added, noting that throughout their trial and in line with the Istanbul Standards, the court decided to refer the defendants to medical expertise, but some of them refused to undergo the expertise on false and illicit grounds.
On the other hand, the Coordination said that “the medical expertise of those who accepted it found that they were not subjected to torture, which proves once again that the allegations made by the militia only aim to alter facts and cover up its crimes against our sons”. In other words, the militia instrumentalizes “torture” to politicize the case and thereby get away with their crimes, said the statement.
