Spain : Judge asks to verify identity of Brahim Ghali for the hearing on Friday

The judge of the investigating court at the Spanish National Hearing, Santiago Pedraz decided, Wednesday, to postpone the hearing of Brahim Ghali until Friday. According to judicial sources cited by La Razón, the judge wished to «verify» the identity of the secretary general of the Polisario Front before the hearing. A case that follows the complaint filed by the Sahrawi blogger Fadel Breika, who hold Spanish citizenship.

The sources of La Razón specify that the magistrate «did not refuse, in principle, to question Ghali as Saharawi media claim». «He accepted that his real identity be verified to ensure that he is the secretary general of the Polisario Front since, according to Jeune Afrique, he would have been admitted under the identity of Mohamed Benbatouche», it added.

This summon is a consequence of the decision of the court to examine, last January, the appeal of the lawyers of the Saharawi activist Fadel Breika. Previously, in 2020, his complaint was rejected, on the grounds that the National Hearing was not competent for the investigation. But at the beginning of the year, Breika revealed that he knew that most of the people who accused Brahim Ghali of torture reside in Spain.

In his order, Pedraz indicates that «the incompetence of the Spanish State to hear the facts set out in the complaint lies solely and exclusively in the absence of residence or nationality of the accused».

In his complaint against Brahim Ghali and other members of the separatist movement, accused of illegal detention, torture and crimes against humanity, Fadel Breika says that in April 2019, he was detained by the military and transferred to detention centers, beaten, electrocuted and kept blindfolded with his hands and feet tied.