Today, Aminatou Haidar will try to fly back home to Laayoune in Morocco where she lives with her two children after being expelled to Lanzarote on Saturday, she has been threatened with arrest if she returns to the country.
Ms Haidar was arrested and her passport and mobile phone confiscated when she arrived in Laayoune on Friday, she is alleged to have refused to carry out police formalities by renouncing her Moroccan citizenship, Aminatou said that she wrote Western Sahara as her country of residence on the entry form on arrival at Laayoune airport. Ms Haidar was with two Spanish journalists Pedro Barbadillo and Pedro Guillén who were also arrested but released and returned to Gran Canaria, Aminatou has threatened to go on hunger strike if she’s not allowed to go home to her two children.
Aminatou Haidar “disappeared” when she was 21 after a peaceful protest and held in various secret detention centers for four years, she was then imprisoned again by the Moroccan authorities in 2005 but released after 7 months due to pressure from Amnesty International and European Parliament. Aminatou was recently awarded the Civil Courage Prize 2009 from The John Train Foundation in New York in October, she is a campaigner of human rights for the people of the Western Sahara and is often referred to as the “Sahrawi Gandhi”.
Since Aminatou’s arrival back in Lanzarote, she had to be persuaded to leave the plane but won’t leave the airport as she doesn’t have her passport, hundreds of Sahrawi’s have turned up at Arrecife airport to support her with banners and placards, the Guardia Civil had to ask them all to leave at midnight so they spent the night outside the building.
Post to Twitter
