Sahrawi children inhumanely treated in Cuba former Cuban official

Sahara issue
Sahrawi children inhumanely treated in Cuba, former Cuban official
Morocco TIMES 3/31/2006 | 12:45 am GMT

“Sahrawi children, who are sent to Cuba, followed military training and
courses on making explosives,” testified one of the Cuban former
officials, who made documentaries on the inhumane conditions of the
Sahrawi children in Cuba, reported MAP news agency.

Some former Cuban senior officials confessed that children, who were
snatched from their parents in Tindouf camps and deported to Cuban
“Youth Island”, endured ill-treatment.

“These children followed military training and courses on the making of
explosives,” said former Cuban instructor, Dariel Alarcon.

Dariel Alarcon, known as “Benigno”, testified in a documentary entitled
“Cuba and Polisario Front: crime partners” that he was in charge of
making Sahrawi children, barely nine years old, undergo a military training.

Alarcon, now exiled in France, recalled boats carrying an "incredibly"
high number of Sahrawi children, who later were sent to "Youth island”
under military control with no hope of escaping.”

“We taught children how to make home-made explosives with such products
as sugar, coffee, sulphur, and nitroglycerine,” he said, revealing that
during these courses “several children were killed. Their bodies should
still be buried in the island if they were not exhumed,” said Alarcon.

Juan Vives, former agent of Cuban secret services, published a
documentary under the title “El Magnifico” in which he described the
inhumane condition of children sent from the Polisario-controlled
Tindouf camps, South-west Algeria, to the Latin American country.

In the documentary, Vives said that the Moroccan Sahrawi children were
sent to schools, which were established especially for them, to follow
their politically oriented studies.

“Children were obliged to work in the fields in the morning and go to
school in the afternoon. Some did not cease to cry, claiming their
parents. It was inhumane. Some arrived so young to Cuba that they hardly
remembered from where they came. And it is very inhumane,” said Vives.

The former agent said that some young people stayed in Cuba over 12
years, admitting that his country hosted “a network of kidnapping children.”

The documentary, which indicated that 2,000 to 3,000 young Sahrawis are
still in Cuba and hundreds of children are still being sent each year,
talked about other abuses exerted by the Polisario, including the
embezzlement of the international aids and the inhumane treatment of the
Moroccan detainees in Tindouf camps.

The DVD documentary was screened during the Moroccan delegation's tour
to several US cities in order to draw the attention of the American
public opinion, particularly the Christian community, to the plight of
the sequestered population in the camps.

During some meetings held in Trenton, New Jersey, Sarasota, Florida and
Jacksonville, the members of the Moroccan delegation presented copies of
this documentary to religious leaders to share it with their communities
and show them the real face of the so-called Polisario.

The Moroccan delegation, composed of Saadani Maa Oulainine, Boussoula
Mohammed Ebeya, Bachir Edkhil, Ali Najab and Ali Jaouhar, delivered
poignant testimonies on the torture they endured during their detention
in Tindouf camps.

http://www.moroccotimes.com/Paper/article.asp?idr=2&id=13816