Polisario officials have just committed a new violation of freedom of expression through the unjustified arrest of a Sahrawi from the Tindouf camp, who is, moreover, one of the separatist movement leaders.
The arrest of Mustapha Salma Ould Sidi Mouloud, Inspector General of the Polisario Police, is a very predictable reaction from the Polisario Security, compelled to carefully follow the instructions of the Intelligence and Security Department (DRS – Algerian Military Intelligence Services). Upon his arrival at the border point leading to Tindouf camps (South-West of Algeria), coming from the Mauritanian territory, Mustapha Salma was arrested in the evening of Tuesday, September 21st, not far from Mhiriz.
The task was entrusted to the Polisario armed militias who are responsible for maintaining order in Tindouf camps and track down all the Sahrawis who dare to challenge the theories and doctrines of the separatist movement, or who try to flee the sequestration camps in order to join Morocco.
Several armed elements from the Polisario, who were in two military vehicles, according to well-informed sources, have arrested Mustapha Salma, before taking him with his companions to an unknown destination.

The arrest took place in Western Sahara and more accurately in Mhiriz, a Moroccan city located in the buffer zone, not far from Dakhla. Taking advantage of the stagnation supervised by UN peacekeepers according to the cease-fire agreements of 1991, the Polisario soldiers crossed the Algerian borders to penetrate the buffer zone up to the town of Mhiriz and arrested the Polisario police official.
Polisario leaders and their Algerian sponsors accused him of having supported the Moroccan autonomy proposal for the Western Sahara and to have promised to defend the solution upon his return to Tindouf camps.
Aware of the Polisario reaction and the risks he has taken when he decided to return to his family in Tindouf camps, Ould Sidi Mouloud, shortly before his arrest, had called the United Nations and all international NGOs defending human rights, urging them to support him in order to preserve his right to freedom of expression and his physical integrity.