La acusación de delitos sexuales contra Brahim Ghali revive en Bruselas

 The Sahrawi woman who in 2013 and 2018 accused Polisario leader Brahim Ghali of sexual assault is back on the charge in Brussels. Jadiyetu Mohamud, was invited to a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels organised by the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality. 

The event, held on Thursday 13 October, under the title "Sexual violence and rape by those in power", consisted of a public hearing of testimonies focusing on the issue of sexual violence by those in high places, abusing their power to do so. Radki Maxová, vice-president of the commission, led the event in which three guests from the world of activism against sexual violence took the floor. 

It was not Mohamud who was able to recount her experience in front of the commission, but Willy Fautré, director and founder of the Belgian NGO Human Rights Without Frontier, who mentioned the case of the Saharawi woman. Mohamud claims to have been raped by the Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, in 2010. Jadiyetu Mohamud says that she was invited by an NGO to attend an event in Italy that year. When she went to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) embassy in Algiers to obtain the necessary travel documents, Mohamud was allegedly blackmailed by Ghali and sexually assaulted on the premises of the diplomatic mission. 

In 2013, Mohamud formally accused the SADR leader before the Spanish National Court, which dismissed the complaint for lack of conclusive elements. In 2018, Jadiyetu Mohamud asked the Spanish judiciary to open her case against Ghali a second time. For the time being, the judiciary has not taken any conclusive steps in this case. According to Sophie Michez, a Belgian lawyer who was able to comment on Mohamud's case at a meeting organised by the Club de Presse in Brussels, pursuing this type of accusation is extremely difficult for the justice system in European states. In her speech, Michez claimed to be familiar with the Western Sahara region and the criminal proceedings related to the Tindouf camps. In the past, she had participated as an international observer in the Gdim Izik trials for the misappropriation of humanitarian aid for the refugee camps. 

"The confused legal, social and humanitarian situation in the Tindouf camps provides cover for violations of women's rights by Polisario leaders, who are often abducted, raped and mistreated," Michez said in her speech at the event. "These camps are not governed by any legal framework. People live there in a non-legal situation," she added. "Mohamud's testimony is revealing of what women often experience in the refugee camps in Tindouf". 

Michez evoked the need for an international justice body not dependent on the Rome Statutes, which govern the International Criminal Court, with the aim of providing a first solution to the potential accusations that can be made in areas without a sufficient legal framework, as is the case in Tindouf. 

Moroccan journalists have echoed Jadiyetu Mohamud's visit to the Parliamentary Committee, among them Mohamed Mamouni Allawi who, for the Emirati daily Al-arab, interviews the Saharawi activist and director of the Saharawi Observatory for Media and Human Rights, Mohamed Salem Abdelfattah. 

Abdelfattah agrees with Sophie Michez about the establishment of widespread impunity in the Tindouf camps. This Saharawi spent ten years in the SADR-administered territories before settling in Laayoune and Rabat and beginning his activism. 

Mohamed Salem Abdelfattah cites another case, that of Safia Mint El-Hassan Ould Ahmida, who, according to Abdelfattah, was abducted and assaulted by Polisario members before the signing of the 1991 cease-fire.