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SHADOW OF IMPUNITYTORTURE IN MOROCCO AND WESTERN SAHARA29bar across the ceiling face-down in the “airplane” position as they hit him with their batonsand other objects. He added that officers staged scenes for photographs in between torturesessions to portray good conditions of detention, bringing him food and clothes provided byhis family and the families of other detainees and swiftly taking them away after the 10-minute photo-shoot. He said that at the end of his garde à vue detention, police officersforced his fingerprints onto an interrogation report without allowing him to read it.On the basis of the forced “confessions”, judicial authorities accused a group of fiveprotesters including both young men of offences including “violence against public officers”,“participating in an armed gathering”, “placing objects on a road obstructing traffic”,“damaging public property”, and attempted “arson”. The court ordered their pre-trialdetention for the following five months before releasing them on bail after their secondhearing with the investigative judge. Their case remains open while hearings have beenrepeatedly postponed.Sahrawis in southern Morocco reported similar abuses. Families of those arrested in Assa,Zag and Guelmim in southern Morocco following protests and clashes in September 2013told Amnesty International that gendarmes and police officers tortured and otherwise illtreatedtheir relatives in detention and forced them to sign or fingerprint interrogationreports.In September 2013, security forces violently dismantled a peaceful protest camp in Tizimi,near the city of Assa. The Ait Oussa Sahrawi tribe had established the camp to call on theauthorities to enforce their property rights following a land dispute with another tribe.Following the dismantling, men and women from the Ait Oussa tribe took to the streets inseveral cities in southern Morocco and Western Sahara. While some protests were peaceful,others escalated into stone-throwing between youths and law enforcement forces.Further demonstrations broke out after one protester Rachid Chine, 20, was hit by one ormore projectiles on 23 September 2013 in front of a mosque in the town of Assa during aconfrontation between protesters and gendarmes, and died shortly thereafter. A video showsthe young man dying minutes after one of several projectiles fired in his direction hit him inthe abdomen. 38 His mother initially called for an independent autopsy outside of Morocco. 39Authorities announced that an investigation was opened into his death but findings have notbeen made public. Rachid Chine’s body was eventually buried outside the city to avoidfurther unrest, local activists told Amnesty International. 40Fearing retaliation, relatives of detainees arrested following Rachid Chine’s death askedAmnesty International to withhold identifying details. Some also asked for details of specifictorture techniques to be withheld. One relative said:38“The moment of the shooting of youth Rachid Chine by a gendarmerie car”, YouTube, 23 September2013, https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=Sft6EwXUdZo39“Statement by the mother of the deceased who died during the clashes in Assa”, YouTube, 23September 2013 (Arabic), https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=FXAAgNG1JXU#t=12640Interviews, Guelmim, 15-16 May 2014.Index: MDE 29/001/2015 Amnesty International May 2015