Polisario leader to be quizzed by Spanish judge

MADRID: The leader of Western Sahara's independence movement, whose presence in Spain has angered the Moroccan government, will appear before a Spanish court Tuesday to answer allegations of torture and genocide.

Brahim Ghali, who heads the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, will testify by video conference from a hospital in Logrono in northern Spain where he has been treated for Covid-19 since mid-April.

The closed-door hearing at Spain's National Court in Madrid is scheduled to get underway at 10:30 am (0830 GMT).

Ghali, who is also the president of the Sahrawi Democratic Arab Republic, a self-declared state since 1976, is the subject of two investigations in Spain.

The presiding judge will decide after he completes his investigation whether to charge the Polisario leader or dismiss the lawsuits against him.

The hearing comes amid heightened tensions between Rabat and Madrid over Ghali's presence in Spain.

Last month Spain was caught off guard as up to 10,000 people surged into its tiny north African enclave of Ceuta as Moroccan border guards looked the other way in what was widely seen as a punitive political gesture.

The Polisario Front has long fought for the independence of Western Sahara, a desert region bigger than Britain which was a Spanish colony until 1975.

Morocco controls 80 percent of the territory, while the rest -- an area bordering Mauritania that is almost totally landlocked -- is run by the Polisario Front.