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activities in human rights groups that had not received legal recognition from the
authorities. They placed them on trial with seven less-known youths accused of
being intifada activists.
The prosecution’s case against the seven prominent activists rested on written
statements that the defendants purportedly made to the police in which they
implicated themselves and one another in planning, provoking and committing
violent actions.
Police arrested Haidar on June 17, 2005, as she was leaving a hospital where she and
two other activists, Fatma Ayyache and el-Houcine Lidri, had received stitches on
their heads. The stitches were applied to treat injuries allegedly caused by the police
clubbing them earlier that day as Haidar was arriving at a demonstration. 115
Lidri and Noumria allege that after their arrest on July 20, the police tortured them at
a secret place of detention before delivering them to the El-Ayoun jail on July 22 (see
below, Alleged Torture of El-Houcine Lidri in 2005).
The main trial session was an 18-hour-long hearing that began on December 13,
2005 and ended at 4 a.m. the following day. The defendants all declared their
innocence of all charges related to planning, inciting, and carrying out violence, and
repudiated the contents of their incriminating statements to the police – as they
already had done before the investigating judge116 – saying the police had either
extracted confessions from them by force or fabricated them. 117 Their lawyers argued
that the credibility of the defendants’ statements to the police was undermined
further by the similarity of the wording attributed to them. 118
115 Human Rights Watch interview with Fatma Ayyache, El-Ayoun, November 3, 2007. Human Rights Watch has on file copies of
medical reports on Lidri and Ayyache from Dr. Abouzaid Hmednah of El-Ayoun dated June 21, 2005, describing for each trauma
injuries to the head and to other parts of the body, and recommending 25 days of rest for Ayyache and 30 days of rest for Lidri.
116 Reports of the Investigating Judge Referring Case to the Criminal Chamber, El-Ayoun Court of Appeals, 05/108, 05/84, and
5/127.
117 Doris Leuenberger, “Rapport de mission d’observation judiciaire au Sahara occidental des 30 novembre et 13 decembre
2005,” Swiss League for Human Rights, Geneva Section, and the Human Rights Committee of the Geneva Bar Association,
www.arso.org/RapportavocatDL.pdf (accessed September 15, 2008) and “Rapport de la Mission d’observation à El Aioun
(Sahara occidental) 29-30 novembre 2005/11 au 15 décembre 2005,” signed by eleven lawyer observers from Spain, France,
Switzerland Tunisia, and Italy, http://www.arso.org/rappmission141205.htm (accessed September 16, 2008).
118 Leuenberger, p. 4.
59 Human Rights Watch December 2008