Souni Ould al-Hafd, 88, and three of his children decided to return to Morocco to end years of suffering away from Morocco since he was kidnapped by the Polisario in 1976.

    "I returned to my country to which we belong," Sheikh Souni said, adding that his decision to stay in the homeland, along with his three children, stems from "our attachment to the unity of our country, whose efforts we support in order to unite families."

    "Throughout all theses years of exile, I had been waiting for the opportunity to escape the camps and return to Morocco, and it presented itself through the family exchange visit initiative," he said.

    Souni noted that the population in the Tindouf Camps lives in harsh conditions, expressing hope that such suffering will end soon. “These people live on an Algerian soil, in a desert and in total destitution. They are only waiting for a solution,” he concluded.

    Earlier this year, some 100 Moroccan Sahrawis, including 20 children, fled Tindouf Camps (southwestern Algeria), where thousands of Moroccan-Sahara natives are held against their will by the Algerian-backed separatist movement Polisario, to return to Morocco.

   The Polisario lays claims to Morocco's Southern Provinces, known as the Sahara, a territory which Morocco had retrieved from the Spanish rule under the Madrid Accord, signed in 1975 with Spain and Mauritania. A year later, Polisario lured thousands of Moroccan Sahrawis into joining it in Tindouf camps where they have been held ever since.

 Source: MAP
News and events on Western Sahara issue / Corcas