Madrid, 29/06/2005 (SPS) Auicha Chafia, wife of Saharawi human rights activist, Ali Salem Tamek, delivered to the Madrid’s edited daily newspaper, El Mundo, a terrible edifying testimony on the methods and the processes of the Moroccan special services which do not hesitate in committing collective rape of their victim and blackmailing them to reach their goals.

The scene took place in June 2003, while Ali Salem Tamek in prison. The woman, very nice and modest, succeeded in overcoming the taboos to divulgate to the public this striking testimony through which she wants the criminals to be presented before of justice in an European country and "not in Morocco because Justice is not independent, but rather here into Europe".

Here is the complete text of this testimony collected by the Moroccan journalist, Ali Lmrabet:

"Auicha Chafia, wife of Ali Salem Tamek, member of the Polisario Front asserts that one of her aggressors is a relative if her husband.
The events took place in June 2003.

The wife of a Saharawi leader affirms to have been violated by five Moroccan police officers.
Before starting to tell her story, Auicha Chafia breathes deeply and look around to make sure that she is not watched over. In the Madrid’s coffee where she was sitting with her daughter Tawra, this young and beautiful Saharawi woman is conscious that it is time to break the taboos and shyness to tell a tragedy that happened a few times ago. After having checked the door of entry of the coffee another time, Auicha starts in Hassania, the dialect of Saharawis, to recall of  what happened two years ago, when she affirms she was wildly violated by five men fro Direction of the Surveillance of the Territory (DGST), the Moroccan political police.

Auicha Chafia is the wife of Ali Salem Tamek, famous trade unionist and active pro-Polisario member in Morocco and Symbol of pro independent Saharawis, Tamek is a constant problem to Moroccan Ministry of Interior which has tried via all ways to buy his loyalty, to make him give up of to discredit him. Only weeks ago, the office of the official Moroccan press agency "MAP" shamelessly sent to Rabat an ashamed account pretending he has threatened "to resort to terrorism". The information was false, of course, but its goal was to make it possible for the Moroccan governmental press to charge against the young Saharawi, who was threatened of murder before. The importance of this small man in size and with solid convictions is big. He was imprisoned several times because of his ideas and is permanently accused by the Alauit regime,

In November last year, during a non-official meeting with the responsible of Moroccan press, the Minister delegated for the Interior, Fouad Ali el Himma, accompanied by his colleague the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Taieb Fassi Fihri, asserted that "Tamek was a capital problem to the kingdom". To Morocco, the relatives of Tamek can be attacked and this is what happened to Auicha.

Aouicha’s tragedy happened last June 2003. She had just left the prison of Ait Mellul, near Agadir city, where she visited her husband who was serving a two years imprisonment sentence for "separatism".

She was intercepted by three men in a car. And as usual Auicha Chafia was accompanied by her daughter, the little Tawra (her name equivalent in English is Revolution). Very harshly, two of the three men put her in the car by force saying they were policemen. Auicha tried to defend herself fighting and screaming, then crying. But the penitentiary centre of Ait Melloul is situated in an open space far from urban areas and generally Moroccans prefer to mind their business when it is a question of kidnapping in the middle of the day. So, with her daughter crying they took her to an unknown place, but which “certainly was a house around Agadir". There she found herself with "five men". In the beginning, this individuals, who identified themselves as "policemen", were gentle asking her information on Tamek their friends "in the interior and exterior", but as she hesitated to speak of "political matters that she does not understand", they passed to other subjects.

A Mission

They told her that they have a mission she can not reject. "They were interested by two friends of Ali Salem. They wanted her to charm Mohamed ELMoutawakil (member of the executive Committee of the Human rights’ NGO, Forum Truth and Justice), and Lhoucin Lidri (described as a Saharawi pro-independence militant), and to tell them when she succeed in attracting them to her bed. "They told me they will offer me a house and a phone number to call them". "But I am not a prostitute and I wanted to go home".

But they did not let her free of course. Passing from insults to threats and doing as they were going to decapitate her daughter, then they passed to deeds. They took her malhfa off (Saharawi women traditional clothes), laughing on her attempts to hide her intimate organs. Then hey passed to "serious" things. She reports, "they did to me what no human being can do to an other human being. In front of my daughter they started harassing me, putting their hands where they should not. Then they fixed me by force and they did things to me from behind, in front and even in the mouth". Because of shyness, Auicha did not use verbs such as rape, sodomise.

Then according to her story,  there was a collective rape that ended with the accustomed method used by the collaborators with the DGST: They urinated on her. Once finished, they took her to her house after having threatened her of reprisal if she reveals the incident to the press. Two days after, she was transferred to a hospital because of "depression".

Now, in the café in Madrid, Auicha affirms that she knows two of the aggressors. She asserts she has got no doubts on this subject. "Firs the so called Brahim Tamek and I knew him because he is the cousin of my husband".

Run away to testify

Brahim Tamek is an employee in the city of TanTan, collaborator with the DGST regarding "Saharawi affairs".  On another hand, he is the brother of the new Governor of Dakhla, Mohamed Saleh Tamek, designated last week. "The second is Mbarek Arsalane", high officer in the DGST in the zone from Agadir to the borders of Western Sahara with Mauritania.

But, a question arises: Why does Auicha reveal this story now, in this moment when the Sahara is in a state of boiling? Can’t they accuse her of duplicity? The answer was striking as a bullet. "Anyone who knows Morocco knows that violations are never considered as violations especially when the responsible are from the police". She also said that she prepared, with her husband, her escape from Morocco for a year, trying to to go to Mauritania first then preferring to go to Europe, which gave her a visa. "In Mauritania, we can not speak like we can do here in Europe", she concluded. With the help of a group of Spanish lawyers, Auicha has got the intention to start a legal action against her aggressors. "Not in Morocco where justice is not independent, but here in Europe", she said. (SPS)

010/090/666/ALG/TRD 290912 June 05 SPS