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and interrogations he underwent while in police custody – indicate that the
automobile violations were a pretext for harassing a human rights activist.
On May 20, 2007 police arrested Duihi while he was driving his Fiat Uno in El-Ayoun
in the company of fellow human rights activist Brahim Al-Ansari (whom the police
targeted separately for harassment at other times; see below). Duihi recalls:
They arrested us on the pretext that the papers for the car were not in
order. They brought us to a police station and held us there for nearly
eight hours. The judicial police asked us questions about our relations
with human rights activists and with international observers who were
coming to observe trials. They asked me about my relationship with
Naâma Asfari and Claude Mangin [Asfari’s wife, also a pro-Sahrawi
activist]. I told the police, “They’re my friends; whenever they come to
El-Ayoun I see them.”
The police just asked questions; they did not threaten or touch us. At
the end we signed a statement saying that we were driving without
having the car’s papers on board. 140
Duihi filed a complaint with the prosecutor on August 9, in which he named officer
Abdelaziz Annouche “et-Tuheimeh” as the one who questioned him. The complaint
notes that the police impounded Duihi’s car for four days after his detention for
reasons he did not know.
Duihi told us that on August 3, 2007, the traffic police stopped him again while he
was driving in El-Ayoun and confiscated his car and its papers even though, he
claimed, his papers were complete and in order. He got the car back six days later,
after paying a fine for a violation he said he did not commit.
Duihi’s third encounter with the police was more serious. On August 22, 2007, at
about 1pm, police in uniform stopped him while he was driving in El-Ayoun, took his
car and brought him to the November 24 police station. According to Duihi:
140 Human Rights Watch interview with Hassan Duihi, El-Ayoun, November 4, 2007.
Human Rights in Western Sahara and Tindouf 74