AMINATOU HAIDAR WINS BATTLE FOR RETURN TO HOMELAND

Western Sahara independence and human rights campaigner Aminatou Haidar returned to her Moroccan-occupied homeland on Thursday night after 32 days on hunger strike at Lanzarote airport.

by James Tweedie

Ms Haidar was flown home to her two children in a small private aircraft late on Thursday night.

She had been admitted to hospital in the small hours of that morning after suffering stomach pains and vomiting blood.

A previous attempt by the Spanish government to return the activist to her homeland failed after the Moroccan government refused to give permission for the flight to land.

Ms Haidar began her hunger strike at Lanzarote's Guacimeta airport on November 16 after she was denied entry to the country of her birth.

She was detained at Laayoune airport in Western Sahara on November 13 on her return from receiving a human-rights award in the US, where she has the support of both Democratic and Republican party politicians.

Officials confiscated her Moroccan passport and deported her to nearby Lanzarote after she wrote gave Western Sahara as her nationality instead of Morocco.

Moroccan foreign minister Taïb Fassi-Fihri accused Ms Haidar of staging the hunger strike as a political stunt in a television interview on December 8.

He also claimed that she was a member of Sahrawi national liberation organisation Frente POLISARIO, but this had already been denied by POLISARIO representatives in the Canaries.

The former colony of Western Sahara was annexed by neighbouring nations Morocco and Mauritania when Spain withdrew in 1975.

Mauritania gave up its claim on the south in 1979 under pressure from POLISARIO guerillas, but Morocco seized the remaining territory.

A UN-brokered and monitored ceasefire has held since 1991. But Morocco has refused to hold a promised independence referendum, instead offering only limited autonomy.

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