Morocco expels eight Europeans supporting Western Sahara prisoners

The Interior Ministry on Thursday said Moroccan authority has expelled eight European activists from the country.
The government expelled the activists on allegation that they were in the country to undermine public order by supporting prisoners from Western Sahara protests in 2010.
A Moroccan military court jailed 24 Western Saharan activists accused of killing members of the security forces who stormed a protest camp, known as Gdeim Izik, in the disputed territory in 2010.
The government said 13 people were killed, including 10 security officers, a firefighter and two civilians.
It added that dozens were injured in November 2010 when security forces dismantled a camp where thousands of Western Saharans, known as Sahrawis, were protesting.
The rights groups said the 21 who remained in jail had been on hunger strike for over a month to protest their sentences.
Tensions over the Western Sahara territory had been on the high side since March when Morocco decided to expel members of a UN mission there over comments by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon which Rabat deemed offensive.
The interior ministry said a group of Europeans representing what it described as the so-called international collective supporting prisoners of Gdeim Izik had been expelled.
“Local authorities in the city of Rabat have expelled eight foreign citizens, including two French nationals, one Belgian and five Spaniards, for attempting to undermine public order,” it said.
Joseph Breham, a member of the group and a lawyer to one of the prisoners, said the group was arrested when they arrived at their hotel in Rabat on Wednesday.
“Authorities were planning to expel them by boat via Tangiers, but when they protested they put them on a plane from Rabat airport on Thursday morning,” Breham told newsmen.
The Western Saharan activists were given varying prison sentences with eight of the 24 being jailed for life.
Three of the accused who received the lightest sentences had already served their terms and had been freed.
National and international right groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, had been calling on the Moroccan authorities to free or retry the group.
Morocco annexed most of the Western Sahara in 1975 from colonial Spain.
The annexation triggered a guerrilla war with the Sahrawi people’s Polisario Front, which says the desert territory in the northwest of Africa belongs to it.
The UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991 and sent in its MINURSO mission to help organise a referendum on the future of the territory, but the talks had been deadlocked.
Reuters/NAN.