Paris (France), June 21, 2026 (SPS) – The Association of Friends of the Sahrawi Republic in France (RASD) has renewed its full and unwavering support for all forms of struggle undertaken by Naama Asfari and other Sahrawi political prisoners, who have been subjected for the past 15 years to denial and mistreatment by the prison administration and the Moroccan state.
In a statement issued three weeks after the start of Naama Asfari’s open-ended hunger strike at Kenitra Prison in Morocco, the organization noted that the action, carried out under the slogan “The Battle of Dignity,” followed three warning hunger strikes of 48 hours each during the month of May, which received no response. His demand is for the implementation of the decisions of the UN Committee Against Torture and the opinion of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
The organization further stated that the Moroccan state has failed to implement any of the measures recommended in the UN Committee’s decisions and in the Working Group’s 2023 opinion, which denounced the arbitrary detention of the Sahrawi prisoners belonging to the Gdeim Izik Group and called for their release. The prisoners had received harsh sentences based on confessions allegedly extracted under torture, according to the findings of the UN Committee Against Torture.
The organization concluded that 15 years of arbitrary detention constitute a situation of such gravity that it requires States Parties—including France—as well as United Nations bodies and non-governmental human rights organizations, to take concrete action and demand explanations from the Moroccan government and state, with a view to putting an end to what it described as a situation that falls outside the rule of law.
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