The head of the Polisario Front and the self-declared Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic leader Brahim Ghali is facing yet another rape charge after a young woman reiterated her call for justice, ten years after he raped her.
Brahim Ghali was elected Secretary General of the Polisario Front in 2016, an Algeria-backed liberation movement launched in 1973 to gain fully recognised independence for Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was annexed by Morocco in 1975 following the Madrid Accords. In 1976, Ghali declared the establishment of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), a self-declared state claiming authority over the Sahrawi territory and its indigenous population.
Ghali was serving as Ambassador to Algeria for the so-called Polisario Front in 2010, when he raped young 18-year-old Sahrawi translator Khadijatou Mahmoud, who was visiting the Polisario embassy in Algiers to retrieve a visa she was granted through an Italian NGO.
Khadijatou Mahmoud was working as an interpreter in the office of the Prime Minister of the Sahrawi Republic (SADR). She had been picked to accompany the delegation of the Italian NGO “Sahara Marathon” during a marathon.
In appreciation of her help, the NGO invited Mahmoud to visit Italy. She applied for a visa, but before retrieving her passport from the Italian consulate in Algiers, she had to go through the embassy of the SADR in Algiers, headed at the time by Ghali, in order to get authorisation to leave the camps. However, the thrill and excitement she felt over starting a new adventure soon turned into horror.
According to her testimony to Moroccan state-owned television channel 2M, Mahmoud’s appointment at the embassy was postponed from 9 am to 7 pm. “I arrived at Brahim Ghali’s office and had barely greeted him when he threw himself on me and raped me,” recalls the young woman.
RAPED, SHAMED, AND REDUCED TO SILENCE
Bleeding and completely distraught, Mahmoud somehow managed to leave the embassy. She sought help from a friend who was staying at a hotel nearby and confided in her. Mahmoud’s friend then advised her to talk to her family, and so she did. However, Mahmoud was met with a cold shoulder by none other than her own mother, who told her to keep the rape secret, as she would have no future otherwise.
“My mother told me, ‘if you speak of this, you may never find someone who would accept to marry you’. It’s about tradition, virginity,” adds Mahmoud.
Mahmoud’s mother’s reaction is, however, not uncommon in the conservative Sahara region, where victims are more often than not blamed by their close family members and friends.
BREAKING THE OMERTA
In 2013, Mahmoud found refuge in Sevilla, Spain, where she managed, with the support of her adoptive family, to file a complaint against Ghali. Ghali has been wanted in Spain since 2008 for serious human rights violations, namely genocide, torture, and illegal detention against Canarian workers in the Sahara territory.
However, in 2018, the Spanish National Court rejected the complaint under the pretext that neither of the parties involved were Spanish.
In a recent video, posted on Twitter on 26 April, Mahmoud reiterated her call for justice after saying she had learned from the media that her rapist had entered Spain under a fake identity to receive emergency COVID-19 treatment. Algeria helped Ghali gain access Spain by providing him with falsified documentation under the name of Mohammed Ben Battouch to avoid prosecution for the multiple charges pending against him in the Iberian state ever since 2007.
On 1 June, Spain’s National Court, which deals with terrorism and fraud-related cases, summoned the so-called Polisario leader to answer for torture and genocide accusations before setting him free, under the pretext that the plaintiffs had failed to provide evidence he had committed any crime.
Ghali remains unpunished and has since returned to Algeria.
Fear of shame, blame, or even reprisal drove Mahmoud to leave everything she had ever loved behind in her homeland to go to Spain, only to face one of the most horrific experiences of her life. Today she hopes that the Spanish judiciary would seize Ghali’s presence on the Iberian soil to hold him accountable, not only for what he did to her, but for all the charges pending against him.
PROLIFERATION OF RAPE CASES IN THE SAHARA REGION
Although Sahrawis have risen up against recurrent cases of rape in the Tindouf camps, the Polisario Front’s leadership remains silent on this growing issue.
Following the lead of the initiators of the international “Me Too” movement, Sahrawi activists launched the “No to Rape” hashtag in 2017, calling for action to protect Sahrawi women against rising sexual abuse and violence, especially in prisons like the “Dhaibia prison”, where many unlawfully-detained Sahrawi women have perished after years of daily abuse and rape by Polisario officials.
Many activists on social media attributed the Polisario’s inertia to the fact that many of its leaders and their sons were accused of involvement in rape cases.
While victim blaming remains the rule in conservative societies throughout the MENA region, Mahmoud hopes her story would encourage other victims of sexual abuse to share theirs.
Lina Madani is a final year student of translation at the King Fahd School of Tangier. She is passionate about Human Rights, especially in the MENA region, and firmly believes that true change comes from within.